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Missouri Counties

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Missouri Counties

Missouri has 114 Counties and one independent city. St. Louis City is separate from St. Louis County and is referred to as a "city not within a county."

Howell County, Missouri

Howell County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: West Plains
Year Organized: 1857
Square Miles: 928

Court House:

1 Courthouse Street
County Courthouse
West Plains, MO 65775-3400

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for James Howell, pioneer settler. Some sources also state the county was named for Thomas J. Howell.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Howell County

A very shallow, wide valley, drained by the upper part of Warm Fork Creek (earlier known as Howell Creek for the settlers there) in the center of which is West Plains. Josiah Howell, who bought the Adams Improvement (see Town Spring), considered the first permanent settler in the present limits of the county, and his sons Thomas Jefferson, later in the Legislature, and Wiley came from Tennessee in the early 1840s. (Mrs. A.C. Risley; S.J. Galloway; H. Chapin; R. Childers; Mrs. Fidelis Willis)

Source: Pottenger, Cora Ann. "Place Names Of Five Southern Border Counties Of Missouri." M.A. thesis., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1945.

Neighboring Counties:

Insert Counties Here

Cities and Towns:

- Brandsville	city	Incorporated Area
- Cabool	city	Incorporated Area
- Mountain View	city	Incorporated Area
- West Plains (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Willow Springs	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."