Richland, MO

Richland is a Missouri city on a ridge two miles north of the Gasconade River, spread across Camden, Laclede, and Pulaski counties. The 2020 census counted 1,734 residents. Richland R-IV School District has an elementary school, junior high, and high school and reaches rural parts of the adjacent counties. City hall, medical and dental clinics, churches, grocery and hardware stores, and nearby Fort Leonard Wood and Lebanon make Richland a service town for a broad rural area.

Surveyor M. Santee laid out the town in 1869 along the railroad. It was first called Lyons Station, then renamed Richland for G.W. Rich, a railroad director. The St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad made the city a shipping point for livestock and farm goods, and mills followed in the late nineteenth century. In the early 1930s, Ozarks Fisheries began raising goldfish on creek farms west of town and remains part of Richland's unusual business history. The present-day map still follows the old pattern: school, rail corridor, farm roads, medical services, and a main street built for a multi-county trade area.