The area had been known as Salt Creek and businesses were in operation several years prior to the town plat actually being filed.

The Felt twins later acquired 320 acres from the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, and were named as "farmers and stock-raisers being among the first settlers of the area.” Their brother George went to Iowa.

Then, Winslow Leach, his wife Annetta Brown, and son Arthur Stanley all died.

The town sits parallel to the railroad tracks and thus isn’t square north and south.

16 in Block 3 for $145.00 on the following conditions: "That intoxicating liquors shall never be bargained, sold, bartered, traded or otherwise disposed of as a beverage in any place of public resort in or on said premises."

[13] The year following the city's move, in 1889, Emil Loew, a harness maker from Tramelan, Switzerland, and wife German-British Mary Groetecke arrived in Mendon from Brookfield to set up a shop and home.

Their daughter Bernah married Chester Arthur Felt in 1909, both resided in Mendon until their deaths.

It had a church, public school, a bank, two hotels, a newspaper, The Citizen, and about twenty other businesses, both large and small, including shops and stores.

"There were farmers, off-duty nurses, truck drivers, soccer moms, Little League coaches and grade-schoolers.

A full year before the tragedy, a Mendon resident met with Chariton County engineers and stakeholders to warn them of the dangerous "steep incline leading up to the crossing."

[17]Although freight trains on the Santa Fe railroad still pass through regularly, little remains of Mendon's business community.

[18] The school's athletic and academic teams compete in Missouri Class 1, the smallest of all classifications.

Mendon's proximity to the Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge has proven a source of income for the community, with business catering to waterfowl hunters who come to the region.

Yellow Creek flows past the northwest side of the town and the Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge is two miles west.

The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad line passes the northwest side of the community.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.18 square miles (0.47 km2), all land.