Sarcoxie, MO

Sarcoxie sits in Jasper County within the Joplin metropolitan area, on the creek that gave its first settlement name. Platted in the early 1830s as Centerville on Center Creek, the town was renamed in 1839 for Sarcoxie, a Delaware chief who had settled near a spring inside the present town limits. That history is still visible around the square. The Sarcoxie Public Square Historic District includes the Red Front Mercantile, a nineteenth-century building that now houses the public library, a coffee shop, and a license office.

The square remains tied to everyday civic routines. City government operates through a mayor and council, the library occupies a building with a commercial past, and Sarcoxie R-II brings elementary, middle, and high-school activities into the town's calendar. Joplin is the nearby metropolitan connection, yet Sarcoxie's own map is legible: Center Creek, the historic square, Red Front, and the school campus all sit within a small city whose present institutions grew out of its early crossroads.