Fulton

The last novelist on the plaque put Fulton in a best-seller. Henry Bellamann modeled the town of Kings Row, his 1940 novel, on his hometown, and Joseph Breen of the Hays Code office called the book "so thoroughly questionable" a work that the 1942 film had to clear the censors. Sam Wood directed Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings and Ronald Reagan, whose Drake McHugh wakes to find his legs amputated and asks, "Where's the rest of me?" Reagan made the line the title of his 1965 autobiography. The film's town sign promised "A Good Town. A Good, Clean Town."

What the plaque says

Fulton Fulton was founded here in the Little Dixie Region of Missouri, 1825, to replace the poorly located Elizabeth as seat of Callaway County. Named for a grandson of Daniel Boone and War of 1812 Ranger, Capt. James Callaway, the county was organized, 1820. The town name honors Robert Fulton. Callaway County is popularly called the Kingdom of Callaway in memory of a War Between the States incident in 1861 when "Col." Jefferson Franklin Jones, leading a civilian army of Callaway men, negotiated with Union Gen. John B. Henderson and got him to agree not to invade Callaway if Jones disbanded his men. Later Fulton was often occupied by Union troops. Here is the Missouri School for the Deaf, first such school west of the Mississippi, founded in 1851; Presbyterian Westminster College for men, founded, 1851, chartered, 1853; and a Christian Church junior college for women, William Woods, founded, 1869, at Camden Point, moved here, 1890. State Hospital No. 1 for mentally ill, chartered, 1847, opened here, 1851, is one of the first three such hospitals west of the Mississippi. (See other side) Fulton (Continued from other side) Fulton is the capital of the Kingdom of Callaway, a county early noted for its fine horses and its pioneering in development of the famous Missouri mule. South, on the Missouri River, is the site of Cote sans Dessein (hill without design). A French trading post, and first settlement in the county, 1808, it was the scene of an Indian attack in the War of 1812. In 1821, Cote sans Dessein was the first place considered for the Missouri state capital but faulty land titles stood in the way. Here at Westminster College a plaque marks site where the phrase "Iron Curtain" was first used in a 1946 speech by English wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Also of interest are a museum collection at William Woods College, and, in town, a statue of Capt. James Callaway. William D. Kerr (1808-89), was first head of School for the Deaf, and Dr. Turner R. H. Smith (1820-85), of Hospital No. 1. Here lived novelists Nathan C. Kouns (1833-90); G. W. Hamilton (1845-1909); Caroline A. Stanley (1849-1919); Henry Bellamann (1882-1945).

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• America's National Churchill Museum — 0.4 mi
  The Westminster College campus where Churchill gave the Iron Curtain speech in 1946, with a bombed Wren church from London rebuilt stone by stone above his museum.
• Rock Bridge Memorial State Park — 20 mi
  Karst on the edge of Columbia: a boardwalk through a natural rock tunnel to the Devil's Icebox sinkholes, over a cave that is the only known home of the pink planarian.
• Missouri State Capitol — 22 mi
  The 1917 capitol on the Jefferson City bluff, built after lightning burned its predecessor, with the State Museum downstairs and Thomas Hart Benton's mural of Missouri in the House Lounge.
• Lincoln University and the Soldiers' Memorial — 23 mi
  The school that Black soldiers of the 62nd and 65th U.S. Colored Infantry paid for out of army wages in 1866, now a land-grant university on its Jefferson City hill.

More markers nearby

• Columbia — 20 mi
• Mexico — 22 mi
• Jefferson City — 22 mi