Waynesville, Missouri: Mad Anthony's Town

Settlers arrived at Roubidoux Creek in eighteen thirty-three and named their new Pulaski County seat after General Mad Anthony Wayne, the bold Revolutionary War commander. When the Civil War came, the courthouse initially flew a Confederate flag, but in June of eighteen sixty-two, Union troops marched in, seized the town, and converted the courthouse into a military hospital. The old courthouse still stands on the Route Sixty-Six corridor and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-nine.

When Missouri officially recognized Route Sixty-Six as a historic highway in nineteen ninety, the signing ceremony was held right here in Waynesville. Today the town of roughly five thousand four hundred is shaped by Fort Leonard Wood next door, with a downtown courthouse square that has witnessed nearly two centuries of American history.