Sense of Place: With One Last Stick of Dynamite, Two Miners Decided Joplin’s Fate – by Claire Kidwell (KSMU.org – June 18, 2018)

https://www.ksmu.org/

Today, the City of Joplin is a thriving hub for health care and transportation. But there was a time when it was no more than a collection of tents huddled around a series of mines.

Walking into the Joplin History Museum, you’re greeted by the two resident cats who watch over the building—and an entire wing designed to look like an old mine.

Old mining equipment rests in the front lawn. It’s immediately obvious how much the mining industry once influenced the area.

I sit down to learn more from museum director, Christopher Wiseman, who was curator of the museum for twenty years.

He said that the industry really started in the 1870s after two lead miners, known as “Sergeant” and “Moffat,” won a prize for how much they produced in another mine in Missouri.

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