Starting in the late 1820s, European-American settlers of English, Scottish, German, Welsh, and Scots-Irish ancestry began moving into the area.

In 1831 he was joined by Nathaniel Turner, John Smith, Joseph Ross, Campbell Pure, Blake Wilson, Levi Lee, Carmac Ratcliffe, and George McInturf.

The earliest known religious effort dates to 1836, when Methodist Circuit riders visited the area and held meetings in settlers' log cabins.

John Reed, Hugh Shannon, and Jacob Testerman sat as judges under appointment by Lilburn Boggs, Governor of Missouri.

French colonists had conducted lead mining further east in Missouri before the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

They designated the temporary seat at the home of John Reed, one and one-half miles east of the present site of downtown Neosho.

By special act passed on August 3, 1854, Congress laid out a monthly Pony Express mail route from Neosho to Albuquerque, New Mexico, authorizing an annual budget of $17,000.

Captain Conrad's men were paroled on July 8 and were escorted the first four miles to protect them from numerous threats against their lives made by Neosho locals.

Governor Jackson and the Missouri General Assembly met in the Masonic Hall, numbering thirty-nine members of the House and ten of the Senate.

They passed an ordinance of secession and the event was celebrated with cannon firing by General Sterling Price's State Guardsmen who were camped in the adjacent hills.

However, the pro-Union members of the General Assembly had already convened, and supported by the occupying Union troops, had declared Jackson removed from office, as well as all who favored the South.

Missouri would have three governors during the course of the Civil War, one elected by the people (Jackson) and two appointed by the pro-Union government (Gamble and William Preble Hall).

General Price made an effort to organize a Confederate defense of Missouri and initially succeeded, but any chance for concerted pro-Southern action ended when he was defeated in March 1862 at Pea Ridge.

During these decades dozens of brick commercial buildings were built around the central courthouse square containing a wide variety of private businesses including lumber yards, livery stables, general stores, and hotels.

Working with other scholars and grape growers, Jaeger supplied cuttings from his Monark Springs vineyards to help replant those lost in Europe.

By the start of the 20th century the city Neosho was a thriving community connected by three rail lines and exporting a variety of products and agricultural produce.

805, of a regular passenger train of the Kansas City Southern Railway Company, near Tipton Ford, a few miles north of Neosho.

[11] Two days later the city held a funeral on the Newton County courthouse lawn for more than 30 unidentified individuals, who were buried in a mass grave in the Neosho I.O.O.F.

During the Great Depression, the federal government assisted financially in the construction of the Neosho City Hall and Municipal Auditorium, as well as the current Newton County Courthouse.

Originally established as Camp Crowder south of town in 1941 at the height of World War II, the post was to serve as an armored training center.

Some of the soldiers stationed at Camp Crowder included Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Mort Walker, Tillman Franks, and Jean Shepherd.

The cartoonist Mort Walker, who was stationed there, later used it for his fictional "Camp Swampy" in his long-running newspaper comic strip, Beetle Bailey.

Local companies provided lumber at cost, and the Jaycees formed an assembly line to build more than 200 wooden flower boxes.

Pet Milk Company donated 400 used wooden barrels for container gardens, and town nurseries supplied plants at reduced rates.

This spring issues at the base of a high bluff of Mississippian limestone from a series of cavernous openings developed along a bedding plane, and flows through the city park.

Due to the recent discovery of the presence of endangered Ozark cave fish in the spring, the city is working closely with Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S.

In 1908, McMahon Spring was added to supply the hatchery's fish rearing ponds, after its condemnation under the governmental power of eminent domain.

Neosho lies near the geographic center of the contiguous United States, in an area with a high concentration of freshwater streams and lakes.

This makes for a humid subtropical (Köppen climate classification: Cfa) with moderate precipitation and extremes of hot and cold.

Interest in this legend increased in 2002, when Jim Cole, the former city manager and director of public works, announced that he believed he found this missing cave.