Schell City, Missouri

   As someone who has lived in southwest Missouri almost all my life and traveled throughout the region quite a bit, I have visited a lot of different communities in the Ozarks, if only to pass through them on the way to somewhere else. However, there are still a few places in this region that I've never been, and I think Schell City in northeast Vernon County is one of them. I have visited the Osage Village Historic Site, which is less than ten miles west of Schell City, but I believe that's about as close as I've ever gotten. Actually, Schell City is not technically in the Ozarks, but it's close enough that I still consider it more or less home territory. Schell City is still a going little town today, but its heyday, like that of a lot of other small rural towns in America, has long since come and gone.
   The first settlers in the Schell City area date to pre-Civil War days, but the village of Schell City was not established until 1871, when it was laid out by the Schell City Town Company as a stop on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway (usually called the M., K. and T or Katy). One of the members of the town company was Augustus Schell, and the place was named after him.
   One day in June of 1871, just a month or two after Schell City had been platted, "seven car loads of excursionists," numbering about 400, left Sedalia by rail to visit the new village. The tourists enjoyed a picnic outing on the banks of the Osage River a couple of miles north of the fledgling community. Several members of the Schell City Town Company also had an interest in the Katy Railroad, and the main purpose of the excursion was to try to interest the tourists, who made the trip by special invitation of the railroad, in buying lots in the new town.
   How many of the Sedalia tourists purchased lots in Schell City is unknown, but the new community did grow rapidly. By 1874, Schell City had six stores, a hotel, a couple of other businesses, and a population of about 200. It was incorporated as a village by the county court in 1879, and by 1880, only nine years after its formation, the village boasted a population of almost 700 people.
   1885 was a bad year for Schell City. Between March and August, the town suffered three significant fires, although the last one, on August 3, is the only one that might be called devastating. A description of the damage, written the next day by a Schell City correspondent to a Sedalia newspaper, not only gives you an idea of the extent of the damage but also indicates that the place was quite a vibrant little town, with numerous businesses, at the time of the fire. Among the buildings that were either destroyed or sustained considerable damage were three grocery stores, two hardware stores, one drugstore, one stationery store, and the post office. At least nine other buildings, unidentified as to the type of business they supported, were also heavily damaged.
   Schell City, however, recovered from the fire, and by 1890 its population stood at approximately 850. The population of the place has trended generally downward ever since it hit that high-water mark to the point that Schell City now has fewer than 250 residents. However, the town still has at least one church, a couple of eating places, a post office, and a couple of other businesses. Probably its main concern, though, is its school, Northeast Vernon County School District, which resulted from the consolidation of Schell City Schools and Walker Schools in the 1990s. As long as the town has its school, it will probably survive and maybe even thrive, but if it ever loses its school, that will probably sound the death knell for the community, as has happened in so many other tiny villages across the Ozarks and all across the country, in fact.