Information Sheet

 

 

R         Missouri, Inland and Southern Railway Company.

850                  Maps, 1910.

                                    Two items.

                                               

 

 

These are route and profile maps for the Missouri, Inland and Southern Railway Company in Dent County, Missouri.  The company was a short-lived organization formed to build an elec­tric railway southward from Rolla, Missouri.

 

Incorporated in 1909, the Missouri, Inland and Southern Railway proposed to build an electric railroad line from a junction with the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad (“Frisco”) at Rolla, Missouri, southward to the Gulf of Mexico.  The proposal for a north-south railroad was one of several such similar schemes dating from the last half of the nineteenth century.  Generally called the “Ozark Short Line,” this particular project began in 1909.  The principal promoter was Elbert E. Young, said to have been a native of Texas County, Missouri.  The line was to run from Rolla to Houston via Rolla, Lenox, Lecoma, Anutt, and Licking.  Surveys and preliminary grading were begun in Phelps, Dent, and Texas counties in 1910.  The railroad company was reorganized in 1911 as the Missouri, Arkansas and Gulf Railway, and a few rails were put down on the line at Rolla in 1912.  The project collapsed when Young was convicted of forgery in Dent County.  The idea was revived briefly in 1914 as the Rolla, Ozark and Southern Railroad Company, but was de­funct by 1915.  Additional information may be found in “The Ozark Short Line: Electric Railway from Rolla to Texas County” in the Newsletter of the Phelps County Historical Society, New Se­ries No. 16 (October 1997): 3-11.

 

The collection consists of a route map (seven sheets on blueprint paper) showing the line of the Missouri, Inland and Southern Railway through Dent County, and a profile map with mile-by-mile summaries of the excavation and construction work in Dent County.  The route map indicates the railroad right-of-way as well as cultural features such as churches, mills, houses, ponds, and road crossings.  A notarized certificate signed by four of the railway company’s directors, attesting to accuracy, accompanies the route maps.  The maps bear the notation, “Filed Sept. 23, 1910, Jno. D. Headrick, Clerk Dent County Court.”

 

Associated with the route map is an undated profile map for miles 13-27 in Dent County.  The profile map, on a roll of blueprint paper sixteen feet long, includes estimates for each mile of the cubic yards of earth to be moved in excavation and embankment, acres to be cleared and grubbed, and culverts and road crossings to be installed.

 

 

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