Platte City, Oldest County Fair West of the Mississippi

Platte City has been the seat of Platte County since December eighteen thirty-nine, when the county court designated the site just three days after the county itself was organized. Zadock Martin incorporated the city in September eighteen forty-three, making it one of the older established towns in northwestern Missouri.

The Civil War hit Platte City twice. Union troops burned the city in December eighteen sixty-one and returned in eighteen sixty-four to burn it again. The county courthouse, destroyed in the fighting, was rebuilt in eighteen sixty-six. That courthouse is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The town has two outlaw footnotes. Jesse James planned to rob the Platte City bank on April third, eighteen eighty-two, but Robert Ford killed him that morning, so the robbery never happened. And on July nineteenth, nineteen thirty-three, Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed just south of town at the Red Crown Tourist Court and engaged in a shootout with local authorities. Through all of it, the Platte County Fair kept going. The first fair ran in eighteen sixty-three and it has run nearly every year since, making it the oldest continuously operating county fair west of the Mississippi River. That fair, now well past its one hundred sixtieth year, is the detail that gives Platte City a claim no other county seat along I-Twenty-Nine can match.