Benton, Missouri

Benton is the county seat of Scott County, Missouri, a small city of under a thousand people tucked into the Mississippi River lowlands near the Arkansas border. The county was organized in eighteen twenty-one and named for John Scott, Missouri's first congressman. The town itself was laid out the following year on land owned by a local colonel, and residents chose the name Benton to honor Thomas Hart Benton, one of Missouri's first two United States senators.

Before any of this, the ground beneath Benton was part of the King's Highway, El Camino Real, the old Spanish road laid out in seventeen eighty-nine, and the Osage tribe held this territory until eighteen oh eight. The Benton area was first settled in seventeen ninety-six, making it one of the older permanently settled spots in the Missouri Bootheel.