Sikeston, Missouri
Sikeston is a city in Scott and New Madrid Counties, Missouri (though mostly in Scott). Its population was 16,318 at the 2010 census, making it one of the largest cities in Southeast Missouri.
Because of its location, approximately halfway between St. Louis and Memphis, and at the intersection of several major national highways, Sikeston is considered something of a gateway to the South. It is often included as part of the Missouri "Bootheel".
History
According to legend, the Sikeston area was first visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1541, though there is no evidence to substantiate this. The first documented presence in the area came in 1789, when the Spanish colonial authorities laid out "El Camino Real," a road to connect towns along or near the Mississippi River south of St. Louis; now known as Kingshighway, this route eventually formed a major north-south avenue for the city. American frontiersmen soon followed, and in 1814 a first settlement, known as "Winchester" in honor of a local resident, was laid out just to the south; it briefly served as the county seat of New Madrid County but ceased to exist after 1822, when that function was moved to New Madrid.
Much of the land north of what had been Winchester was acquired in the early 19th century by the Stallcup family. In 1859 it passed into the hands of John Sikes, who had married into the family. Work by now had begun on the Cairo-Fulton Railroad that extended westward from the Mississippi through southern Missouri; seeing the economic potential this represented, in 1860 Sikes platted a town at the point where the railroad crossed Kingshighway, and named it "Sikeston" after himself.[1]
The area was not a major theater of conflict during the Civil War, which broke out soon after the town's founding, but it did see considerable activity early on. Sikes himself was said to have narrowly avoided lynching at the hands of Confederate guerrillas, while according to another legend, Confederate general M. Jeff Thompson, who dominated Southeast Missouri in the first months of the war, buried money from a bank robbery at nearby Charleston under an oak tree at what is now the corner of New Madrid Street and Kingshighway, though no signs of the money have ever been found. Sikeston was occupied in March 1862 as part of Union General John Pope's operations against New Madrid and Island Number Ten; the city had a Union garrison for the rest of the war, though Confederate forces reappeared in the vicinity from time to time.