|
Though the city would later become the home of many a PCB designer working
in the technology sector with a whole brood of kids, the part of the Missouri
territory that would later become Springfield was largely uninhabited when it
was obtained by the United States during the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Local
Kikipoo Native Americans living nearby were soon augmented by numbers of displaced
Delaware Natives and later by forcibly evicted Cherokee Natives from the east
on their way along the Trail of Tears.
Springfield's founder, John Polk Campbell, announced his claim to the
area in 1829, eight years after Missouri became a state. The name Springfield
has a number of possible explanations, including that the city had a spring
through a field, that someone named it for their hometown in Springfield, Tennessee,
and that a person bribed everyone to vote to name the town after his home in
Springfield, Massachusetts. Wherever the name came from, it was adopted around
the same time they created the motto "Future Great" for themselves,
predicting their upcoming prowess in the making of fabricated strainers and
other products.
Several battles were fought in and around Springfield during the civil war
including the Battle of Wilson's Creek, and the first and second Battles
of Springfield. Many of the sites have been preserved by the National Park Service
to save them from being turned into heat shrink tubing factories as the city
industrialized after the war. Postwar the city gained a Wild West reputation,
largely because of a shootout involving Wild Bill Hickock. The city grew quickly
after the arrival of the railroad in 1870, expanding and modernizing gradually
through the construction of many buildings, which are preserved as historic
sites to this day.
The early 1900s were tough times for Springfield because of mounting racial
tensions. Three African American men who were falsely accused of assaulting
a white woman were bodily torn from jail by an angry mob and lynched, prompting
a mass exodus of African Americans. The incident is commemorated only by a small
plaque at the site of the hangings. This tragic incident has resulted in the
modern city having only a small minority of African American residents despite
the fact that the city has grown up and now welcomes everyone into the ranks
of online project management jobs and government.
In 1926 Springfield became the starting point of US Route 66, which would spawn
towns and roadhouses from the Midwest to California, that would come to epitomize
the road tripping American culture. It was during this time that the automobile
became ubiquitous in the United States. Later, in the 1950s, Springfield would
make headlines once again by turning out four popular television programs and
spawning a lively country music industry. Shows like the Ozark Jubilee and the
Five Star Jubilee focused on country music and remain one of the town's
defining features, even years later in the era of computer technology and waste
water grit removal. |