Platte County was one of six counties formed from the U.S. government's 1836 Platte Purchase, in which Iowa, Sac, Fox, and small bands of other Indian tribes gave up over 2 million acres of land for $7,500 and other benefits. The purchase was annexed to Missouri in 1837, and Platte County, comprising 414 square miles, was organized in 1838. Its name comes from the nearby Platte River, from the French word for shallow. In a fertile glacial plains region, the county was an early leading hemp grower and is now noted for tobacco, grain, and livestock farms. Missouri's oldest continuing county fair began there in 1858. The first settler near Platte City, the county seat, was Zadoc Martin, who came in 1828 and ran a Platte River ferry for traffic to Fort Leavenworth. Weston, an early thriving Missouri River port later noted for its pre-Civil War architecture and tobacco market, was founded in 1837-38 to the northwest by Joseph Moore and Bela M. Hughes. Parkville, a prominent early town to the southeast, was settled by George S. Park in 1838, and Camden Point and New Market were settled to the north in the 1840's. Settled largely by Southerners, Platte County expanded with a planter economy. The area's rich soil had been noted early by the 1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition. Platte County was deeply involved in the Kansas border strife over the extension of slavery that broke out when the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed slavery north of 36° 30' in 1854 by repealing the 1820 Missouri Compromise. At Parkville, the press of the Industrial Luminary was thrown into the river after editor George S. Park criticized the activities of proslavery men. During the Civil War, the area was torn by guerrilla warfare, and Platte City, a proslavery center, was burned in 1861 and again in 1864. Among fifteen schools of higher learning in the county by the 1890's was today's Park College, founded at Parkville in 1875 by George S. Park and John A. McAfee. Guy B. Park, governor from 1933 to 1937, and David R. Atchison, a pro-Southern leader and senator from 1843 to 1855, lived in Platte City, and Ben Holladay, the Stagecoach King, lived at Weston. The pioneer Flintlock Baptist Church is nearby.