Poplar Bluff, laid out in 1849 as the seat of newly organized Butler County, took its name from yellow poplars on the bluffs above Black River in the Ozark perimeter above Missouri's Southeast Lowland Region. French trappers called the river L'eau Noire; it flows clear and swift above Poplar Bluff and murky and slow below. Butler County was named for Mexican War General W.O. Butler. Almost destroyed by guerrillas and troop foragers during the Civil War, Poplar Bluff began its present development with the arrival of the St. Louis, Iron Mt., & So. R.R. (Mo. Pac.) in 1872. The lumbering era of the 1870's to early 1900's brought a second railroad, the Frisco, two banks, and Black River Seminary from 1869 to 1875. Growth continued with the agricultural economy that developed after the lumbering boom, and reclamation of Butler County's swamp between the St. Francis and Black rivers began with the 1913 Inter-River Drainage District. The county produces rice, cotton, grain, livestock, and lumber. Poplar Bluff, seat of Butler County, with its trade, banks, and industries, stands in territory ceded by Osage Indians in 1808 and used by other tribes into the 1930's. Southward is Gillis Bluff, said to be named for an Indian trader who had a post there around 1825, and above Poplar Bluff ran the Natchitoches Trail, an Indian pathway to the Southwest traveled in part by geologists H.R. Schoolcraft in 1819 and G.W. Featherstonaugh in 1834. Some 1800 Indian mounds remain in the county area. Butler County's first settler is said to have been Solomon Kittrell in 1819, and early pioneers, largely from Kentucky and Tennessee, were drawn by plentiful water, wood, and game; taxes were often paid in furs. About 1881, a number of German families formed a short-lived communal colony near Gillis Bluff where they laid out Carola. In 1927, a tornado struck Poplar Bluff, killing 87 and causing more than 2 million dollars in damage; the courthouse rebuilt afterward is the county's fourth. Poplar Bluff was also the home of Dwight H. Brown, Missouri's Secretary of State from 1932 to 1944.