West Plains, the judicial seat of Howell County and one of Missouri's livestock marketing centers, was formed in 1850 when a post office was opened in the home of Josephus Howell. Named for its location on the open plains west of Thomasville, the nearest town, it became the seat of Howell County after the county was organized in 1857. Tennessean Josiah Howell, the first permanent settler here in 1839, and Thomas J. Howell, a state legislator from Oregon County, are said to be honored by the county name. During the Civil War, West Plains and Howell County were ravaged by foraging troops and raiding bands; Confederate volunteers escaped encircling Union troops here on Feb. 19, 1862, after a skirmish, and raiders burned West Plains in 1863, leaving it uninhabited until the war's close. Resettled in 1865, West Plains had a population of 150 by 1870, and its growth as a marketing and trade center began in 1883 with the coming of the Kansas City, Springfield, & Memphis R.R. West Plains College, open from 1890 to 1904, was a well known school, and the present courthouse, the fourth, dates from 1936. West Plains stands in territory ceded by Osage tribes in 1808, visited by Shawnee and Delaware Indians into the 1840's, with an ancient Indian trail running north and south through the county and more than 1,000 prehistoric mounds remaining in the area. Howell County, now devoted to livestock, dairy, poultry, grain, and fruit farming, is also an iron and lumber producer; Willow Springs grew as a lumber, dairy, and poultry marketing town on the railroad in the 1880's, Mountain View became a post-Civil War lumbering town, and part of the county lies in Mark Twain National Forest. Among people associated with West Plains and Howell County were Alice Cary (Farmer) Risley, a Civil War nurse who came to West Plains in 1873, and Jay L. Torrey, a Spanish-American War colonel who came to Howell County in 1905 and developed Fruitville Farms.