A Town almost Forgotten

Patty and I were in far northern Missouri recently on a road trip with our good friends, Jodi and Jody Mauck. We stopped at antique stores, and little shops and restaurants along our circuitous 300 mile route.  We took a short hop over the Iowa line just long enough to dine at an old grist mill that has been turned into a restaurant, and is on the National Historic Registry. Great atmosphere, great food.

One place we discovered along the way, was the Battle of Athens State Park on the Des Moines River, near the Iowa border. The park turned out to be a pleasant aside on our trip.

It is a small battlefield park a few miles off the main highway. It doesn't look like a battlefield. Not a single old cannon is present  for view. I have toured many Civil War battlefields, including all the battlefields of the Army of Northern Virginia, from Bull Run to Appomattox. This little park is small enough to fit into the gift shops of some of the other battlefield parks. The battle here was only a one day affair, but that fight has the distinction of being the northernmost Civil War battle fought in the state of Missouri (it may be the northernmost battle fought in the nation) and that is part of its claim to fame

 There are just a few houses still standing that were present at the time of the battle, and these are preserved through state and local funding. There are old building foundations, and depressions where streets ran. If you look hard enough, and use your imagination, you can see the remnants of an old community. However, it is not what is in the park that left an impression on me,,but what is no longer there.

Our guide was an English woman with a lovely accent, and a passion for her work. She gave us a wonderful tour; even though we showed up at the park at lunch time, not knowing what to expect. She showed us through a house that still has the holes visible where a cannon ball entered and exited. When she was pointing out the flooded foundation of a once highly prosperous grist and textile mill along the Des Moines River, I started thinking " so little is left to tell the story of this place."

We looked down the knob to the riverbank below. There had been a settlement in this place, she explained, beginning in 1830-34. She told us that, what was now underwater, had once been the main street of town. Building after building of bustling businesses had lined the river bank to serve the needs of the 500 people that had lived here, and the river traffic that plied the water way.   A dam had been built here, and at the time, everyone felt the town of Athens would grow into a large and prosperous city. They had good reason to be optimistic.

 Athens had boasted of fifty businesses, numerous homes,  five churches, a two story school house, and even a large hotel.There were places to work and places to play, places to learn and places to stay. A growing town in an expanding nation. Sadly, all but six houses and one old church have vanished over time. Only a ghostly reminder of the hopes and aspirations of a people and their town. 
An entire booming business district fell to ruin and, with the establishment of the Mississippi River levee system years later, eventually washed away. The river, that never flooded these banks back then, is now at the mercy of the locks and dams of the Mississippi River system. Even the dam that powered the  huge mill is reduced to rubble and ruin along the banks and shallows. The mill itself, once the heart of the business community, is twenty feet of stone walls that, today, has a river flowing through it.

If not for that one day when the Union wanted to run the southern born and Confederate-leaning townsmen out of the country, few if any today would ever know that an entire town had once stood and thrived along the river. The town of Athens, which for many years couldn't do anything but grow and prosper, began to wilt away after the war between the states.

I am sure that there was a great deal of speculation surrounding the growth of Athens, Missouri  during its heyday. Capitol was raised as high as the dreams of those who saw the towns potential. Ambitious folks carved out a place to prosper from the inevitable continued expansion of the town. In the early days of the towns growth, Athens would have seemed a safe bet for any entrepreneur. How could you lose? A huge mill for textiles and grains.  A navigable river for supplies and travelers. But, like for so many communities during Americas' developing years (towns that budded, but never fully bloomed) fate had a business plan of its own.

A war between friends and bothers changed the tide of economic growth all across America, and shifted the momentum away from this little town on the river. Nothing lasts forever, and some things just don't last long enough.

After the Civil War, some towns popped up in the most unlikely of all places, like Tombstone, Arizona, and thrived despite all odds. Other villages, in locations seemingly perfect for a town, just withered away and died . Many small towns have no past to share, nothing of historical significance to mark its place in time.  No famous townsman nor President. No western lawmen gunfight or world changing inventor. Even today, little rural towns, without strong economic connections of some kind, just slowly fade away.

 Athens, Missouri however, was saved for the ages. Not because of its dam, textile mill, bustling riverfront,  or beautiful location. It wasn't the few decades of prosperity and growth, proper planning, or shrewed investments that kept Athens  on the map. No, it was saved from an invisible existence because of a national argument. It was memorialized in a one day fight, more northern in location than any other, during a war that divided a nation. Fate may not have allowed this village to grow into all it hoped to be, but a Union victory, though far overshadowed by battles in places like Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Atlanta, became the one brief moment in time that flagged this little communities' record of life.

But for the few old houses and stone foundations, no one would ever guess that a whole lovely, lively town had once been here along this rolling river. 

Athens is gone; the war that contributed to its demise, however, has kept it from being forgotten.