Bollinger County is a county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 10,567. The county seat, largest and only city, is Marble Hill. The largely rural county is supported by agriculture and construction. The county was officially organized in March 1851 from portions of Wayne, Cape Girardeau and Stoddard Counties, and named in honor of George Frederick Bollinger, an early settler.
Bollinger County is part of the Cape Girardeau, MO–IL Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is the home of the "Missouri dinosaur" discovered at an archaeological dig near Glen Allen in 1942. Blue Pond, the deepest natural pond in Missouri, is located in the southern portion of the county.
History
In fall 1799, George Frederick Bollinger, a North Carolina settler of German descent persuaded 20 other families to leave North Carolina and settle in a region immediately west of what is now Cape Girardeau, Missouri. To acquire the land, Bollinger first had to sign off a document asserting that he and his fellow settlers were all Roman Catholics. In reality, most of the group were members of the German Reformed Church and none were actually Catholic. However, Don Louis Lorimier, the Spanish Land Commandant of Cape Girardeau, had been impressed by Bollinger on an earlier visit and decided to bend the rules for him and his fellow settlers.
Lorimier's willingness to place German Reformed settlers west of Cape Girardeau is somewhat perplexing given his earlier role in placing a group of Shawnee settlers in that same location. Lorimier had earlier fled Ohio Country with his half-Shawnee wife and a band of Shawnee after a raid by men under George Rogers Clark in 1782. He eventually migrated across the Mississippi River and settled at Cape Girardeau in 1793. Later he was appointed Land Commandant at Cape Girardeau.
The Bollinger-led group of families moved into an area that became known as the "Dutch Settlement" along the Whitewater River in January 1800, crossing their wagons over the Mississippi River after an unusually cold stretch of weather had frozen the surface all the way across.
Meanwhile, ownership of the region shifted in quick succession from Spain to France and then in 1803 to the United States via the Louisiana Purchase. The change in national ownership did not bode well for the earlier Shawnee settlers. In 1825 they were removed permanently when the U.S. government enacted the treaty with the Shawnee in 1825. This treaty, whose first signatory was William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition fame, required that the Shawnee move to what is now known as Shawnee Mission, Kansas, on land that had previously belonged to the Osage tribes. One of the Cherokee Trail of Tears routes passed through Sedgewickville, while another passed through Glennon and Zalma.
The region west of Cape Girardeau was organized as a county in 1851 and was named Bollinger County in honor of George Frederick Bollinger. The county seat was Dallas, renamed Marble Hill in 1865. In the next county to the west, Madison County, the settlement of Fredericktown was also named after Bollinger.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (0.5%) is water. The county's terrain ranges from the Mississippi Delta flatlands in the south to the Ozark Hills in the north.
Adjacent counties
- Perry County (north)
- Cape Girardeau County (east)
- Stoddard County (south)
- Wayne County (southwest)
- Madison County (northwest)
Major highways
- 20px Route 34
- 20px Route 51
- 20px Route 72
National protected area
- Mark Twain National Forest (part)