Jasper County Seat Dispute

   Carthage, Missouri, was named the county seat of Jasper County within a year or so after the county was formed in 1841. Joplin and Webb City did not come into existence until the 1870s, after lead and zinc were discovered in the western part of the county. However, Joplin and Webb City, especially Joplin, grew quickly, and a rivalry soon developed between the old town of Carthage and its upstart neighbors to the west. At the same time, Webb City, Carterville, and some of the other smaller towns of the mining district also resented the fact that Joplin, its larger neighbor, hogged all the publicity relative to the mining district. Often the region was even called the Joplin Mining District, and some folks especially resented this, because Webb City and Carterville, which were so close to each other as to be virtually the same town, and Galena, just across the state line in Kansas, had almost as much mining output as Joplin. Not to mention the fact that there was a plethora of other, smaller mining camps in western Jasper County, like Zincite. They preferred to call the region the Missouri-Kansas Mining District. (Lead had yet to be discovered in large quantities in northeast Oklahoma. After that happened, the region was usually known as the Tri-State Mining District.)
   The people of western Jasper County did not like having to travel to Carthage to file mining deeds and to transact other legal business, and as the area continued to grow, they began to push for a second county seat to be located in the western part of the county, or else to have the western half split off into a whole separate county. The citizens of Joplin petitioned to have a second county seat located in Joplin, which was by far the largest of the towns in the western section. Webb City and the other smaller mining communities opposed this, but the people of Carthage forged an unlikely partnership with Joplin to get the proposal passed in 1891. It called for a large new courthouse (the current building) to be constructed in Carthage and a smaller one in Joplin. In effect, Joplin became a satellite of the main county seat in Carthage, although it was sometimes referred to as a separate county seat.
   Webb City, though, did not give up on its efforts to have a county seat located there. In 1898, a movement formed to have the main county seat moved from Carthage to Webb City, and this time Joplin allied with Webb City. In fact, most observers said that Joplin was really the driving force behind the movement. A Carthage correspondent to a Springfield newspaper called the whole thing a "scheme...hatched at Joplin," because the citizens of western Jasper County were unhappy that the region wasn't getting as many bridges and other road improvements as they thought it should. "A deal seems to have been made between Joplin and Webb City," continued the correspondent, "whereby they will vote together and 'do' Carthage."
  Although I have not learned the exact outcome of any vote of the people or vote of the legislature that might have been taken on this 1898 proposal, the effort to move the county seat to Webb City obviously failed, since Carthage is still today the main county seat of Jasper County, with a satellite court building at Joplin.