Bits & pieces, an assortment of Webb City trivia

It is time for fun bits and pieces of Webb City trivia. Little pieces of history can sometimes get lost even though you might have read it a long time ago. This trivia will remind you, be something new to you or just tinkle and tease your mind.

• The area of Mount Hope Cemetery was once known as Pilot Grove.

• Webb City received a silver medal for a mineral display at the 1898 International Exposition at Omaha, Neb. It was the only silver medal awarded. (Whatever happened to that medal?)

• Ben’s Branch runs through the Cardinal Valley Habitat between Webb City and Carterville. It was named for John C. Webb’s brother Benjamin C. Webb, who was also the first mayor of Webb City.

• Webb City Bank was established in 1882. A new safe was added in 1916. The new vault had 5-inch thick burglar-proof walls. In 1978, the building was doubled in size when the Webb City Bank purchased the OTASCO building to the north. The Jack Dawson mural was unveiled in 1978 after the bank remodel. The building is for sale, but the city has accepted ownership of the mural.

• An interesting story about a mattress factory that was located on Main Street: A young girl was hypnotized and laid in the window for a week promoting the comfortable mattresses.

• A small town southwest of Oronogo and north of Webb City was known as French Point. It was home to a skirmish during the Civil War on May 14, 1863, and a second skirmish on May 18. The Confederates came out ahead.

• A.H. Rogers, founder of the Southwest Missouri Railway Association in Webb City (the streetcars) was attending college at Harvard in 1877. He went to visit Professor Alexander Graham Bell, who had just received a patent for his telephone invention. While there, Rogers was in the professor’s attic, and he spoke on the telephone with Bell, who was in the basement. What excitement. Rogers claimed to be the first person from Southwest Missouri to talk on a telephone.

• American Bell Telephone Co. installed the first telephone in Webb City in 1881. Telephone wires were strung along trees, bushes, fence posts, buildings, porches, etc.

• Webb City received its second telephone company in 1896, The Home Telephone Co. Businesses would purchase phones from both companies so all their customers could reach them by telephone. The two companies eventually merged in 1913. In 1925, Southwestern Bell bought them out.

• Prosperity was originally named Troup City, until 1891, when residents applied for a post office to keep from being incorporated into Carterville. They were denied because of the name of the town. They successfully reapplied under the name of Prosperity.

• The Southwest Missouri Railway Association monument located at the entrance to the King Jack was dedicated in 1982. Fred Rogers obtained the decorative ornamental slabs from the old Connor Hotel. He salvaged them just before the building collapsed and stored them at the airport until ready to be used.

• In 1935, Joplin purchased 319 acres from Webb City to develop the Joplin Regional Airport.

• Late in the afternoon, Aug. 24, 1939, a terrific hailstorm occurred, with the largest hail stones ever known or heard of by the people of this district. Huge, almost square chunks of ice, large enough to fill a pint-size container and some the size of eggs, left gaping holes in the roofs of homes in Webb City, Joplin, Carthage and other area cities.

• In February 1962, Webb City was invaded by baseball greats Mickey Mantle, Ken Boyer, Whitey Herzog, Roger Maris, Bill Tuttle, Norm Siebern, Bob Cerv, Bob Allison, Dick Williams, Cal Melish, Hank Bauer, Jerry Lumpe, and Bill Virdon. They were in town for the grand opening Clete Boyer’s Stop and Shop Food Center (in the 100 block of South Main Street.) A big event in a small town!

• Webb City’s first kindergarten class began in September 1963.

• Webb City got its first Walmart in 1980.

• The Webb City Mining Days annual celebration began in 1980, with proceeds to go toward a community building. The Mining Days Community Building was dedicated in 2004. Due to a lack of volunteers, the Webb City Mining Days Committee disbanded in February 2008, after 28 years of fun and laughter.

This was just a small token of the wonderful trivia of Webb City and her 149 years of history.