La Grange, MO

La Grange is a Lewis County city on the Mississippi River, where the 2020 census counted 825 residents. The first settler arrived around 1828, the town was laid out in 1830, and a post office followed in 1833. La Grange stood on river bluffs near the Wyaconda and Mississippi meeting, first carrying the name Skinner’s Landing before becoming a city in 1853.

The river made La Grange a commercial place, with steamboat traffic, produce shipping, and two railroads by 1872. Education gave the town another role: the Southern Baptists opened a male and female seminary in 1858, which became LaGrange College before moving to Hannibal in 1928 as Hannibal–LaGrange College. A Supreme Court case in 1885 also put La Grange into the national legal record over the city’s attempt to use eminent domain for a private iron and steel company. La Grange’s story runs from landing to college town to river city, with the Mississippi still setting the edge of its map.