Pilot Grove took its name from a grove of trees visible for miles on the rolling prairie that guided travelers southwest along the divide between the Lamine River and Petite Saline Creek, though the grove’s exact location and type cannot now be pinned down. Around 1820, a small settlement grew up near a horse-powered mill on a branch of Petite Saline Creek, and a post office established in 1833 became a longtime meeting place for nearby residents. The town’s course changed dramatically when the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway reached Pilot Grove on May 18, 1873, leading to the town’s platting on May 30 and making Samuel Roe, whose farm the line crossed, regarded as its founder. The railroad quickly brought jobs and commerce, with Pilot Grove becoming a shipping point for wheat and livestock and a center for furniture, boat, and cabinet making, and by the late 1880s it supported a wide range of stores, hotels, shops, churches, and societies. The area around Pilot Grove also preserves notable old homes including Ravenswood, Crestmead, Pleasant Green, and Burwood, whose architecture, interiors, surviving slave quarters, and associations with early adoption of new technologies, mule raising, shorthorn cattle, Civil War troop movements, and cattle drives reflect Cooper County’s past. Near the end of World War II, on May 6, 1945, a Katy train bound for St. Louis derailed just northeast of Pilot Grove when a broken brake beam caught in a switch, igniting crude oil cars and setting off artillery shells in rear cars for hours; smoke and explosions spread danger over the area, though only Conductor John Lucas and Brakeman A.L. Homan suffered minor injuries.