Osceola was an early thriving post on the Osage River, settled largely by Southerners in the mid-1830's and first known, with its first store, as the crossing of the Osage at Crow and Crutchfield's until the name of the Indian warrior was adopted. In 1841 it became the seat of newly organized St. Clair County, named for Gen. Aurthur St. Clair of the Revolutionary War. In the Civil War, Osceola was the first town of wealth and consequence to be victimized in the raids characteristic of the Missouri-Kansas border conflict when Kansas troops under Gen. James H. Lane looted and burned the defenseless town to ashes on Sept. 23, 1861, though $150,000 in bank deposits had been removed before the raid and was saved. In 1860, Osceola, including the township, had a population of 2,077 and was a trade center and distribution point for goods shipped on the Osage River, but by 1865 it was almost in ruins with a population of 183. Renewed growth did not come until the Kansas City, Osceola, and Southern R.R. (Frisco) reached the town in 1885. Osceola serves as a trading center and seat of justice for a grain, poultry, and livestock farming county in an area representing both the Ozark Highland and Western Prairie regions of Missouri. The Osage Indians gave up their claims to this region in their first Missouri land cession in 1808, and many of their campsites have been found in the county; evidence of prehistoric man has also been found, and a cave dwelling at Monegaw Springs has yielded a number of artifacts. Osceola was also the home of Waldo P. Johnson, who lived from 1817 to 1885 and served as a U.S. Senator, Confederate States Senator from Missouri, and president of the State Constitutional Convention in 1875, and of his son Thomas M. Johnson, who lived from 1851 to 1919 and was a noted Greek scholar and bibliophile. Nearby are a Boy Scout Reservation, a pioneer log-cabin home built in the early 1850's that survived the Civil War, and, two miles south of town, the junction of the Sac and Osage rivers.