About

The eleven essays included in this volume offer the most authoritative account yet published of the distinctively urban history of Springfield, Missouri—the largest city in the Ozarks. Essays on early history include “Quinine and Courage: The Battle of Springfield, January 8, 1863,” by William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford. Post-Civil War histories include “Retail Rivals: Springfield’s Commercial Street versus the Public Square, 1870–1945,” by Angela Wingo Miller, and “Memories of Walter Majors: Searching for African American History in Springfield,” by Richard L. Schur. Post–World War II histories include “From Zenith to Nadir: The Story of Springfield’s Largest Manufacturing Plant,” by Tim Knapp, and “The Demise of O’Reilly Hospital and the Beginning of Evangel College, 1946–1955,” by Lawrence J. Nelson. The volume concludes with Holly A. Baggett’s “Creation of a Community: A History of Gay and Lesbian Springfield, 1945–2010.”

Contributors: Holly A. Baggett, Tom Dicke, Tim Knapp, Stephen L. McIntyre, Edgar D. McKinney, Angela Wingo Miller, F. Thornton Miller, Lawrence J. Nelson, William Garrett Piston, John C. Rutherford, Richard L. Schur, and Erin M. Smither.

Editor

Stephen L. McIntyre is professor of history at Missouri State University, where he specializes in American labor and working-class history.

Praise

“Steve McIntyre’s collection of essays offers a thoroughly researched and rewarding study of Springfield, Missouri, history and community development. While introducing a colorful assortment of characters, places, and happenings from the city’s less familiar past, Springfield’s Urban Histories also charts a course for future scholarship to build a more complete understanding of Springfield and southwest Missouri’s textured heritage.”

—Joel P. Rhodes, author of A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: The Life of Louis Houck

“The scholarship and writing in these essays is really first rate. It is nice to see a scholarly treatment of the history of Springfield that also attempts to place events in the city’s history in context. Historians of Missouri history will find this volume useful.”

—Tom Spencer, author of The Veiled Prophet Celebration and editor of The Other Missouri History: Populists, Prostitutes, and Regular Folk

Publisher

Distributed for Moon City Press.