Holding that position through 1832, Dunklin won the that year's Missouri gubernatorial election as a member of the Democratic Party.

[1] The Jefferson City News Tribune has credited Dunklin with "founding the state's public school system".

In 1843, he was appointed to help adjudge a boundary dispute between Missouri and Arkansas, and he died of pneumonia on July 25, 1844.

[3] By 1951, the Tri-City Independent newspaper of Festus, Missouri, reported that Dunklin's grave site lay "neglected on a bluff".

[6] The park, which is located on bluffs above the Mississippi, consists of the grave site surrounded by limestone walls.