Athens in far northern Missouri was once a busy antebellum river village with dozens of businesses and a large mill. In July 1861, pro-Union Missouri Home Guard forces occupied the town, and on August 5, 1861, elements of the pro-Southern Missouri State Guard attacked to seize this strategic settlement for the Confederacy. Though outnumbered by more than three to one, the Home Guard held Athens and won. Small in scale and light in casualties, the fight is significant as the northernmost Civil War battle fought west of the Mississippi River. Local bitterness after the battle, along with railroad growth and declining river shipping, accelerated the town’s collapse into near ghost-town status by the early twentieth century.