Moberly, the “Magic City,” grew from a town platted by the North Missouri R.R. (Wabash) in 1866 into a transportation center with a population of 6,070 by 1880. The North Missouri acquired the site when it took over the Chariton and Randolph R.R. after the Civil War in 1860. In 1860, the Chariton and Randolph R.R. had planned a road west to Brunswick from this point on the North Missouri, then reaching toward Iowa. The Chariton and Randolph R.R. named its proposed junction for William Moberly, head of the road, and offered free land to residents of nearby Allen to settle here. Patrick Lynch alone accepted and was given two lots by the North Missouri after the Civil War for holding the site without “the loss of a life or a house.” Moberly has been a division point since 1867, when the North Missouri (Wabash) reached Brunswick. Huge railroad repair shops, one of the earliest railroad plants west of the Mississippi, opened in 1872, and the M.K. and T. formed a junction here in 1873. Transportation facilities brought industrial growth and the development of the area’s soil, fire clay, and coal resources. Moberly lies in a glacial plains area in Randolph County, organized in 1829 and named for John Randolph of Roanoke, Va. In Missouri’s Little Dixie Region, the county was first settled by William Holman in 1818. William Fort boiled salt at a spring near Huntsville in the 1820s. The Bee Trace, a pioneer trail, ran along the Grand Divide between the Missouri and Mississippi through the county. The Iowa Sac and Fox tribes gave up claims to the region in 1824. At Huntsville, county seat since 1831, a plank road was built to Glasgow in 1854, and Mount Pleasant (Baptist) College was founded in 1855 and lasted until 1882. County legal business had been conducted at Huntsville and Moberly since 1885. Moberly Junior College opened in 1927. World War II Gen. Omar N. Bradley, first Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, was born in nearby Clark, and Moberly’s airport is named for him. Moberly is the home of novelist Elizabeth Selfert Gasparotti and birthplace of writer Jack Conroy. C.W.P. Hunt, first Governor of Arizona, was born in Huntsville. Hancock L. Jackson, interim Governor of Missouri in 1857 and Lieutenant Governor from 1857 to 1861, and the biochemist Victor Vaughn, were natives of Randolph County.