Nevada, Missouri

Its Industrial, Commercial and Social Interests, Growth and Prosperity







NEVADA, COUNTY SEAT OF VERNON COUNTY.

      The origin of the City of Nevada and its founding were public and official acts, growing out of the municipal organization of Vernon county, and not the work of individual or corporate enterprise. The selection of the site as according to the forms of law, and not for purposes of commercial advantage merely. It was not contemplated in the beginning that the business interests of the town would be more incidental to its character as the capital of the new county. It was not imagined that in time the county seat feature would become practically incidental, while the business and commercial features would be chief.
      The commissioners appointed to select the permanent county seat of Vernon county, Messrs. John W. Boyd, of Jasper; and Abram Cassell, of Cass, proceeded on the 1st of October, 1855, to the discharge of their duties, and on the same day made selection of the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter of section 4, township 35, range 31, belonging to Thos. H. Austin, having been entered by him October 20, 1854; also ten acres off the west end of the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of the same section, owned by Benj. Baugh, who had purchased the tract to which it belonged from James Skaggs, who entered it November 3, 1853. The entire fifty acres cost the county $250. Austin receiving $200 for his forty acres, and Baugh $50 for his ten.
      The following day the commissioners made report of their action to the county court, then in session at Noah Caton's, 		and that body approved everything that had been done. The site was so near the exact geographical center of the county, so desirable naturally and so easy of access, that no other conclusion could well have been reached. From its natural peculiarities the county court desired to name the new town Fairview, and indeed the locality bad been so called by certain persons; but the county circuit clerk, Col. D. C. Hunter, objected, and reminded the judges that there was already a village and post-office of that name in Cass county, and that the similarity in names would inevitably lead to embarrassment and confusion. Presiding Justice Still then said: "Well, Hunter, you give it a name." Hunter had been a California gold seeker, and recalled some very pleasant remembrances of the town of Nevada City, then, as now, the county seat of Nevada county, in the Golden State. He proposed to call the new capital of the county of Vernon in honor of the delightful little burg on the Pacific slope. The court, after some discussion as to the propriety and relevancy of the name, finally acquiesced and the town was ordered named Nevada City.
      Notwithstanding the fact that the town was laid out in the fall of 1855, no improvements were made until in the spring of 1856. In May, A. G. Anderson began the erection of a store house on lot 1, block 7; a few days later D. C. Hunter began a dwelling house on lot 8, block 7; both buildings were frames.
      The first family on the original townsite was that of D. C. Hunter.
      Soon after the first houses were built the post-office was removed from "Haletown" to Nevada, and Col. Hunter commissioned the first postmaster, succeeding Col.
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