Cameron: The Town That Moved by Ox Team

In eighteen fifty-four Samuel McCorkle and a group of settlers platted a four-block town called Somerville along the planned route of the Hannibal-to-Saint Joseph Railroad. There was one problem: the grade was too steep for trains to stop. So the settlers hitched oxen to the three buildings that made up Somerville and dragged them a mile southwest to flatter ground.

McCorkle platted the relocated town in eighteen fifty-five and named it after his wife's maiden name, Cameron. The railroad came, and within a generation Cameron grew from one hundred residents to three thousand. It became a college town in eighteen eighty-three when Cameron Institute opened, later becoming Missouri Wesleyan College, which operated until nineteen thirty.

Today Cameron sits at the junction of Interstates Thirty-Five and Thirty-Six, a regional hub in northwestern Missouri.