Doolittle, Missouri: Named for the General Who Flew In

Before it had a proper name, this stretch of Route sixty-six farmland east of Rolla was called Centertown. Fort Leonard Wood was established nearby in nineteen forty-one, and the fields along the highway filled with workers, businesses, and families serving the booming military base. When the community organized as a town in the early nineteen forties, the residents decided to honor Lieutenant General James Doolittle, the aviator who had led the famous Tokyo Raid in April nineteen forty-two, the first American air strike on the Japanese mainland.

In nineteen forty-six, Doolittle himself flew his own B-twenty-five bomber to the nearby airport at Vichy for the dedication ceremony, keeping a promise he had made two years earlier. The town has borne his name ever since. Today it sits beside Interstate forty-four, a small Missouri city of a few hundred people with a name that carries a lot more history than its size would suggest.