Viburnum, MO

Viburnum is an Iron County city in southeast Missouri, four miles north of Bixby and 20 miles west of Belgrade. A post office opened here in 1907 and remained until 1955; the name comes from the viburnum plant genus, including shrubs known as black haw and arrowwood. The modern city is tied to a different chapter: the New Lead Belt, or Viburnum Trend, where lead production began around 1960. At the 2020 census, Viburnum had 667 residents, giving the mining district a small municipal center rather than a big-city footprint.

One of the town's best local details is tucked into its civic history. In 1963, Viburnum built a City Hall that housed a jail, firehouse, and Ozark Regional Library branch under one roof. The library still lists a Viburnum branch at City Hall, with programs and technology help linking the town to the wider regional system. Iron County C-4 schools add another local institution, while the surrounding mine district remains the reason Viburnum exists at its present scale. The result is a compact Ozark town where the plant-name origin, lead-mining landscape, school, library, and city services all sit in the same small geographic frame.