Bonne Terre (/bɒnˈtɛər/ bon-TAIR) is a city in St. Francois County, Missouri, United States with a population of 6,864 at the 2010 census.

Mine tailing piles eroded, and contaminated the area as dust, posing residential hazards or were washed into the Big River.

Bonne Terre is also home to the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, a 3000 bed prison of adult males who may have substance abuse issues or are mentally disabled, where Missouri has conducted all of its executions since April 2005.

Bonne Terre is part of the Southeast Missouri Lead District, an area of rolling hills of the Ozark Plateau with elevations up to 300 feet.

[7] The community was originally part of the Louisiana Territory and settled by Frenchmen in 1720 after they discovered lead ore.[8] Two Frenchmen, La Motte and Philip Francois Renault, had left France in 1719 with 200 miners in search of minerals as part of the Company of the West.

[5] Surface miners referred to it as La Bonne Terre around 1825, meaning "the good soil" because of the lead.

After a post office was established in 1868, the corporate name of the town, "St. Joe´s mines" changed to Bonne Terre.

[9] The miners were local small farmers, timber cutters and rock quarrymen supplementing their income, and later Hungarian and other Slavic and southern European immigrants.

[5] In 1890, the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railroad hauled ore to Herculaneum smelters.

[5] In 1977, heavy rains caused about 50,000 cubic yards of tailings to slough into the Big River.

[12] Chat dumps or mine tailing piles remain until today; lead dust contaminated the surrounding area and was a hazard to residents.

[12] Bonne Terre is home to the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, a roughly 3000-bed prison of adult males who may have substance abuse issues or are mentally disabled.

[17] The Limestone building in the style of Italian renaissance was built in 1905 by St. Joe Lead Company director Dwight Jones.

[5] In 1974, Bonne Terre Mine, and in 1984 St. Joe Lead Company Administration Building were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Downtown architecture includes as the oldest building the Shepard house from 1869, while the former post office is from 1878 and a bathhouse (natatorium) is from 1889.