New Madrid, MO

New Madrid is a Mississippi River city and the county seat of New Madrid County, 42 miles southwest of Cairo, Illinois. The 2020 census counted 2,787 residents. The settlement grew under Spanish rule in the late eighteenth century as a place of exchange along the river, and the river has been a restless neighbor ever since, washing at the banks and changing the shape of the town. New Madrid sits beside the Kentucky Bend, where the Mississippi curves around a piece of Kentucky, so the county-seat map and the river map never quite line up.

The city is best known for the earthquakes that shook the central Mississippi Valley from December 1811 into 1812. Thousands of tremors hit the Bootheel, the river briefly ran backward, and the land around New Madrid changed in ways people still talk about. The New Madrid Historical Museum occupies the former Kendall Saloon at the foot of Main Street and follows the story from Mississippian settlements through the river town's early years. New Madrid County R-I School District operates Central High School and other local schools, while Three Rivers College serves the wider county. New Madrid keeps its courthouse role, museum, schools, and riverfront in one small city, with the seismic past always close to the present.