Battle of Athens State Historic Site

In the 1850s Athens was a busy river town. A federal lock and dam on the Des Moines River, built in the late 1840s, made it a port, and it grew to about 500 people with fifty businesses, among them a large hotel, a wagon factory, a meatpacking plant and a mill that turned out flour, cornmeal, lumber and cotton and woolen goods. Its settlers came mostly from the upper South, and when the war began the county's Unionists counted it a hotbed of Southern sympathy.

On July 24, 1861, David Moore marched about 500 Union volunteers into Athens and quartered them in the homes and shops of Southern sympathizers. Col. Martin Green raised some 2,000 men to drive him out, two of Moore's own sons among them. They attacked at about five in the morning on August 5, with Moore's men on three sides and the river at their backs. Better trained and armed, the Unionists broke the attack in about two hours. At least fifty men were killed or wounded, and northeast Missouri stayed under Union control. It was the northernmost Civil War battle fought in Missouri.

The town lost. Bitterness between neighbours lasted for decades, the railroads drew trade away from the river, and by 1900 Athens was nearly gone. Local people commemorated the battle from 1868, and in 1962 they formed an association that raised money with dances, raffles and motorcycle hill climbs to buy back the ground. The Thome-Benning house still shows the two holes a cannonball made through its kitchen walls.