Ash Grove, MO

Ash Grove is a Greene County city about twenty miles northwest of Springfield. It was laid out in 1853 and took its name from a grove of ash trees near the original town site. The city sits in the Grand Prairie landscape, where older farm and business history overlaps with the quarries and rail lines that helped move materials through southwest Missouri. The name sounds leafy; the local past has plenty of stone and steel in it.

Several nearby markers make that past physical: Berry Cemetery, the Gilmore Octagonal Barn, Phenix Marble Quarry, the 1800s original quarry of Ash Grove Cement, and the abandoned Leaky Roof rail line. The Nathan and Olive Boone Homestead State Historic Site adds a frontier-era landmark to the area. Ash Grove is a place where a short drive from downtown can take you from a cemetery to a quarry, a barn, a rail grade, or a Boone family site. Its map is small, but the traces around it cover farms, industry, transportation, and early settlement.