HistoryJanuary 21, 2025

Headlines from history on this date include a massive merchandise theft, calming waters on the Mississippi, and the city's high-and-dry parks budget.

A 1925 burglary gave businessman Charles Miller déjà vu — he was the victim of an almost identical crime three years earlier. In other news on this date, the Mississippi River crisis of 1950 began to recede, and the city pondered its underfunded to-do list in 1975.

100 years ago

Jan. 21, 1925

• A Poplar Bluff merchant was robbed of thousands of dollars in merchandise last night. Again.

Sometime between 2-3 a.m., thieves forced open a side door at the Charles Miller clothing store on Main Street and took around $3,000 of fine clothing. The Daily Republican reported, “The loot consisted chiefly of ladies’ evening and street dresses, silk underwear, men’s overcoars and suits, and traveling bags,” and called it “the most gigantic merchandise burglary in Poplar Bluff history.”

Miller’s store was robbed three years ago with a similar modus operandi: a door broken and only the most expensive merchandise missing. Miller suspects those burglars returned last night. Authorities are following leads and watching the roads out of Poplar Bluff.

75 years ago

Jan. 21, 1950

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• The U.S. Army Engineers announced the Mississippi River crisis was subsiding. The Red Cross warned the Bootheel’s nearly 12,000 refugees not to return home immediately.

Raging floods on the river opened the possibility of blowing open the Bird’s Point-New Madrid levee to drain water into the Mississippi lowlands. This could prevent catastrophe for cities on the river, but would destroy over 100,000 acres of farm and pasture land. Evacuations from localized flooding turned into a mass exodus at this announcement. Fortunately, the river’s crest appears to be passing safely below the point of no return.

The Red Cross urged caution in returning, stating, “We hope that none of the refugees will be foolhardy. We’d not want to encourage them to move back in. Another day or two on dry land won’t hurt anybody.”

50 year ago

Jan. 21, 1975

• The Poplar Bluff Parks Department is making do after a request for financial aid was bungled.

Park Superintendent John Lawson asked the city council to help fund three projects: paving at Hillcrest and Whiteley parks, renovation of the Hillcrest pool, and land acquisition on Highway 67 South. Matching grants for the latter two were submitted to the Department of Natural Resources, but the pool project was withdrawn because Poplar Bluff was unable filfill the matching funds on that project. Employees at DNR accidentally threw out the land acquisition grant request too, not realizing the papers were attached.

The paving project has already been budgeted and contracted. The parks board asked the city council for permission to purchase as much land as possible with the $100,000 already set aside for that purpose, and presented several options for replacing the Hillcrest pool.

City Manager David Pence recommended the council rate the projects by priority and fund them over a two-year period.

“I can’t see financing them in one year,” he noted.

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