Loma Linda, MO

Loma Linda is a Newton County town in the Joplin metro whose layout is unusually easy to read: homes and streets spread around the Loma Linda Country Club, with fairways and neighborhood roads doing as much to organize the place as a traditional main street would. The country club dates to 1971, when Joe Blau and Ted Hoffman created it, and the surrounding village incorporated in 1995. At 943 residents in 2020, Loma Linda is small, but its connection to Joplin gives it access to the services and jobs of southwest Missouri’s larger urban area. The setting is part residential neighborhood, part golf community, and part municipality with its own board, committees, streets, parks, and building rules.

That planning-minded setup is still visible in the town’s everyday business. Loma Linda’s Board of Trustees meets at Town Hall, while separate committees handle architecture and zoning, finances, parks, and streets; property-owner meetings add another layer of neighborhood coordination. The town’s address on Butterfield Drive and its collection of named drives and lanes make it feel more like a planned residential enclave than an old crossroads settlement. Yet the county context matters: Newton County includes Loma Linda among its communities, and the town sits within the Joplin metropolitan area, close to the bigger commercial and cultural circuit. Loma Linda’s story is less about a busy center than about how a golf course development grew into a governed Missouri town.