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.
Sikeston grew slowly in the years after the war. Though businesses and a public school were soon added, it had only about 250 residents at the time of its incorporation in 1875. Significant growth did not come until the creation of the Little River Drainage District in 1907, which cleared and drained the swamps of Southeast Missouri and opened the fertile ex-wetlands to agriculture. Land prices quickly rose from 60 cents to over $200 an acre, and Sikeston (like other towns) boomed. A regional history in 1912 noted that it had some 50 businesses, multiple churches and newspapers, and two schools. For a time, Sikeston was said to have more millionaires per capita than any other community in the country.[2]
20th and 21st centuries
Sikeston's boom years were ended by the Great Depression, in which two of its three banks failed and many businesses shut down. The policies of the New Deal had only mixed results; the WPA constructed some new buildings and paved the major streets, but the AAA's efforts to reduce farm production led to a major demonstration by sharecroppers in 1939. Economic recovery in the area was mainly due to the continued demand for cotton, now an important crop in the Sikeston region.
The city grew further during World War II, as an airport was constructed and served as the site of the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics, used to train thousands of combat pilots. More institutions were established in the post-war era, including a permanent hospital in 1948, a Wal-Mart in 1968 (the first outside of Arkansas), and a large power plant in 1978. More recently, several large industrial plants and distribution centers have been opened, and the opening of Interstates 55 and 57 have encouraged economic growth along the city's southern and eastern edges.[3]