Norwood, Missouri

Early in my teaching career, I taught at Houston, Missouri, for a year, and almost every weekend, my wife and I would drive to Springfield to see our two families., both of whom lived in the Springfield area. We didn't always take the same route, but most of the time we came by way of U.S. Highway 60, which took us through Norwood. I remember that, either during the time I taught at Houston or somewhere near that time, there was a big controversy at Norwood High School because a boy had been expelled from school for refusing to cut his long hair. 

Those trips between Springfield and Houston and the hair controversy are the two main things I tend to associate with Norwood, but there's a little more to the town than that. Norwood was laid out along the route of the Kansas City, Springfield, and Memphis Railroad when it was built through the area in 1882. The town was named Norwood after the novel of the same name by Henry Ward Beecher. 

Norwood didn't exactly boom in the months and years after its formation. At least, that's the conclusion one can reasonably draw from a brief mention of Norwood that I found in a March 1892 issue of a Springfield newspaper. A reporter visited Norwood and asked an old man he encountered what the population of the town was. The old codger supposedly said, "About ten, reckonin' the children, two cats, and one dog." This statement, of course, was made in jest, but it still gives an indication that Norwood did not amount to much, even ten years after its creation. The reporter opined that Norwood could hardly be called a village. 

Norwood did experience growth after 1893, though. In 1911, when a Springfield Leader reporter visited Norwood, he estimated the town's population at about 500. The newspaperman had previously visited Norwood about six years earlier, and he estimated that the town had grown by about 65% during the interval. A lot of farming, stock raising, and fruit raising were taking place in the outlying areas around Norwood, and the town itself boasted a bank, three general merchants, a lumber store, two drugstores, and a hardware and farm implement store.  

In 1930, Norwood had a population of about 350. Over the next 80 years, it reached a low of about 260 in 1960 and a high of over 660 in 2010. In 2020, the population stood at 578.