Lebanon

Lebanon, 1,265 feet above sea level in Missouri's Central Ozarks, was founded in 1849 as the seat of newly organized Laclede County by southern settlers who named it for Lebanon, Tenn., while the county honored the founder of St. Louis. When Lebanon refused the South Pacific Railroad free land for a depot, the track was laid a mile from town in 1869, and the town later moved to the railroad, leaving the original site as Old Town. Harold Bell Wright served as pastor of the Christian Church here from 1905 to 1907, and Lebanon became the setting of his 1909 novel The Calling of Dan Matthews; he also used Brice village and Bennett's Mill, once located in the state park, as background. Bennett Spring State Park, a scenic trout fishing resort in Dallas and Laclede counties, centers on a spring that rises from a gravelly basin 866 feet above sea level with a daily average flow of 71 million gallons and feeds the Niangua River; the state bought the park in 1924. Lebanon lies on historic Route 66 midway between Rolla and Springfield along a route first used as an Indian trail, then as part of the St. Louis to Springfield Road, followed by Cherokee people on the Trail of Tears in 1837. During the Civil War this road became a military highway, and by 1862 a telegraph line from Rolla, Missouri, to Fort Smith, Arkansas, ran along it, giving rise to the name Old Wire Road, while Lebanon was occupied alternately by Union and Confederate troops throughout the war. Lebanon was also the birthplace of Governor Phil M. Donnelly, elected in 1944 and again in 1952 as the first in Missouri chosen to two four-year terms, and was home to Richard Silver Dick Bland, Congressman from 1873 to 1895 and 1897 to 1899, Governor Joseph W. McClurg, and educator William T. Vernon, Register of the U.S. Treasury from 1906 to 1911.

Lebanon, Missouri · United States