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 | Peace in the Valley |
| Obituaries of Palmer |
| Ghostly Voices of Palmer |
| Palmer Lead Smelter |
| Deserted Village (Palmer Pictures-1963) |
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| Mines, Metals, & Arts - 1874 |
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News GOOD NEWS!!! The United States Forest Service has cancelled the effort to turn Palmer into a Jeep Trail!! They do not have the funds for this project. Thank you ALL for all the effort you have put into fighting this project! The letters and phone calls have convinced them that we would not give up Palmer without a fight!! BUT they have tried it before and they will try it again - so PLEASE keep your eyes and ears open so they cannot sneak it past us in the future! Once again - THANK YOU! Check out our new page - The Obituaries of the People of Palmer. Please send me any obituaries you may have to share! So many people have come to the Palmer page looking for family links. Since we no longer have to concentrate on politics, let's concentrate on our past!! |
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Deserted Village (Palmer Pictures-1963)
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This article was printed in a magazine April 21, 1963. I don't know who wrote it or what magazine it appeared in. The pictures are good but the writer obviously didn't know the people of Palmer. Or it would not be called "The Deserted Village". And they definitely would know that there are a lot of us (ghosts) who do remember…
There's none to remember, Maybe, not even ghosts
The town was cut out of the forest. It was built by early Missouri settlers, it grew, it thrived, and then it died.
And now it is a ghost town, and the forest is closing in again, and some day it will go back to the forest, and the town and the life, and the work and the loves and the hopes of its generations will be only a memory. But there will be no one to remember.
The town is named Palmer, and a half dozen of its dying houses still exist on land which is now part of the Clark National Forest, about 90 miles south of St. Louis near Potosi.
Some old clippings say the pioneers settled there in 1803, which was the year of the Louisiana Purchase, and at first it had such names as Coldwater and Cold Spring and Webster, after Daniel. It became Palmer much later when brothers of that name took over the lead mining operations. For it was the mining of lead nearby which boomed Palmer into a dusty crossroads town which in 1874, according to old records, had a population of 300, a hotel, a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, a church, a school, mine offices and 85 homes.

 When the lead mines were played out, that was the end of the Ozarks town of Palmer, Mo., which once had 300 people. All but a few have gone away forever and the faded buildings are being swallowed up by time and Clark National Forest. This is the abandoned schoolhouse. |
 Where children once played, where wives saw their husbands off to work, rank weeds now grow and the forest moves in. Homes stand windowless and so does the lonesome, weather beaten Building at the end of the row which was once Palmer's busy crossroads store. |
 This is a glimpse of the tall plain building, its paint long peeled away, which was once the town's store.
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 A chimney which once warmed a home and family stands as a stark survivor of long ago, while a weathered gate still holds its ground against the intruding woods.
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 In the old days when it kept apace with the world, the people of Palmer welcomed the coming of the automobile age with this old-fashioned hand-cranked gas pump. It still stands by the roadside.
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