McNatt

A couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about Indian Springs, the mineral-water town that sprang up in northern McDonald County in the early 1880s but died almost as quickly as it arose. I said that the town was renamed McNatt not long after it had fizzled as a mineral-water town. Actually, though, that's not exactly true, as I was recently informed by a man who currently owns property at McNatt. McNatt is located where the old Neosho to Pineville road crossed Indian Creek, and apparently there was a trading post or general store at or near the crossing quite a while before the town of Indian Springs sprang up on the nearby hill that overlooks the stream. The store's location at the crossing had no official name prior to the formation of Indian Springs, but after the demise of the mineral-water town, it was given the name McNatt after the person who ran the store and/or owned the surrounding land. So, in fact, McNatt and Indian Springs were two different places located very close to each other, not the same place as I suggested in my previous post. This crossing at McNatt is the one used by Confederate troops on their way south when they evacuated Newtonia shortly after the First Battle of Newtonia. Leaving Newtonia headed south, they struck the Indian Creek woods and followed the creek in a southwesterly direction until they struck the Neosho to Pineville road just above the crossing and then took this road south toward Pineville.