Doolittle: The Town That Named Itself After a War Hero

The small Route Sixty-Six town you're near was called Centertown until World War Two changed things. The original name was simple geography: it sat halfway between Rolla and Newburg. The community boomed in the spring of nineteen forty-one when construction began on Fort Leonard Wood, twenty miles away, flooding the area with workers and soldiers.

In nineteen forty-four, residents voted to rename the town after Lieutenant General James Doolittle, who had led the daring bombing raid on Tokyo in April nineteen forty-two. Doolittle could not attend the ceremony until after the war ended. On October eleventh, nineteen forty-six, he flew his own B-twenty-five into the dedication as thousands turned out.

The town kept the name. Today about five hundred and sixty people live here, but the Route Sixty-Six connection and that wartime christening story remain the town's deepest claim to history.