Halltown, Missouri: The Antique Capital
Near Springfield, Missouri
The settlement here carried the name of the Hall family, its original landowners, and a post office opened in eighteen seventy-nine. In the nineteen twenties Route Sixty-Six rolled through, and Halltown reinvented itself, with the town physically moving half a mile to be closer to the road. At its peak after World War Two, a long row of businesses lined both sides of the highway, including gas stations, cafes, and antique shops.
Travel writers started calling it the Antique Capital of the United States. Then Interstate Forty-Four bypassed the whole stretch, and the town began to empty. Today Halltown has fewer than two hundred residents.
The old Whitehall Mercantile building still stands, and the Las Vegas Hotel is now apartments, quiet monuments to a road-trip economy that vanished overnight.
