Amazonia, Missouri, The Bernese Colony

The small town of Amazonia, just north of Saint Joseph, has an exotic name whose origin is uncertain, though one story credits a steamboat called Amazonia that reportedly foundered in the Missouri River nearby when the first settlers arrived in eighteen fifty-seven.

Those settlers were mostly Swiss. Peter Moser organized a group of emigrants from the canton of Bern who pooled funds to purchase a tract of land in Andrew County, dividing it into lots for fellow newcomers. So many Bernese followed that neighbors called the settlement the Bernese colony. The first store went up in eighteen fifty-seven; a second merchant arrived the following year. Today Amazonia is a quiet Andrew County village of fewer than three hundred people, but the Swiss origins gave this Missouri River bluff town a name that still raises an eyebrow on the way past.