Timber town and how Barron Road came to be in PB

The Poplar Bluff Museum has tales about us, our family and our history. I want to tell you some of those tales found within the museum walls.

The fertile overflow swamp land between the Black River and the St. Francis River grew the biggest trees in the area.

Enormous bald cypress and water tupelo trees grew in the wetlands. Pine, oak and ash hardwood trees grew in the hills. Southeast Butler County was a virgin forest.

A handful of homesteaders logged the area only to carve out a small patch of farmland for their meager crops.

According to the “Poplar Bluff Historical Preservation Commission,” it wasn’t until 1872 when the “St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad” arrived did commercial logging become profitable.

By 1907, there were 57 mills or other related industries employing 1,400 men. Poplar Bluff became a logging boom town and a railroad center from 1880 to 1890. The town became filled with hard men. Working for less than a dollar a day, many were killed and maimed in the logging camps and mills.

Once felled, the trees were taken by oxen either to a railhead or a barge, then loaded on a steamboat on the Black or St. Francis rivers.

In 1900, Lowell Palmer and William Barron came to Poplar Bluff and established the “Brooklyn Cooperage Company.” They were the largest timber company in town, becoming the largest manufacturer of barrel wood stays in the nation. They built their own railroad. The “Butler County Railroad” spread throughout Butler County, establishing many logging camps and timber towns that fed the Poplar Bluff mills.

Harviell, Qulin, Broseley, Neelyville and Fisk were such towns. Many were named after Palmer and Barron’s family members.

The modern Barron Road was the main road leading from Poplar Bluff to St. Louis and named after William Barron.

In 1927, the forests disappeared and the logging industry ended. The Brooklyn Cooperage Company closed. The Butler County Railroad began passenger service and eventually merged with the Frisco Railroad. Southeast Butler County towns became farming and agricultural-based communities.

The Poplar Bluff Museum has many of the logging tools and equipment used by these hard men in the “US Forest Service Conservation Room.”

The museum is open every Sunday free of charge from 1-4 p.m. at 1010 Main St., Poplar Bluff (Formerly the Old Mark Twain School).

The history of the “Timber Trains” can be found at the MoArk Railroad Museum. The museum is located in the old Frisco Depot across from the Black River Coliseum. It is open every Saturday free of charge from 1-4 p.m.

Tell them Mike sent you!

Mike Shane is a veteran, Poplar Bluff resident and board member for the Poplar Bluff Museum.