Bollinger Mill State Historic Site

George Frederick Bollinger led a group of families from North Carolina to the Whitewater River under a Spanish land grant and in 1800 began a mill and dam. Bollinger sat as a senator in Missouri's first General Assembly. The log mill and dam were rebuilt in stone in 1825, and that limestone foundation and dam are still there. After Bollinger died in 1842 his daughter, Sarah Daugherty, and her two sons ran the mill until Union troops burned it during the Civil War to keep flour and meal out of Confederate hands.

After the war Solomon R. Burford bought the mill and 640 acres and rebuilt in brick on the old stone base. The four-story mill was finished in 1867, Burford's initials are still on the wall inside the front door, and it was probably then that a water-driven turbine replaced the wheel. The village of Burfordville grew up around it, and the Cape County Milling Company ran the mill from 1897 to 1953.

Beside it, the Burfordville Covered Bridge is the oldest covered bridge left in Missouri. Joseph Lansmon of Cape Girardeau began it in 1858 and finished it in 1868, a 140-foot Howe truss of yellow poplar on the toll road to Jackson and Cape Girardeau. Tolls lasted until 1906, when local farmers, tired of waiting for the courts to end them, broke down the gates. A record flood in 1986 put 17 inches of water across the deck and shifted the bridge, and it is now open to walkers only.