Birds Eye View of Joplin 1877

Birds Eye View of Joplin 1877. . , Before the city of Joplin was incorporated in 1873, there were two distinct lead and zinc mining communities called Murphysburg and Joplin City. Joplin Creek divided the townships, with Murphysburg located to the northwest and Joplin City to the southeast. , An early settler named John C. Cox laid out a town southeast of Joplin Creek in July 1871 and named it "Joplin City" in honor of his friend Rev. Harris G. Joplin. Rev. Joplin, a Methodist minister, leased his land from Cox and built a cabin on an 80-acre tract near the creek, which also became his namesake, Joplin Creek. , Two months later, the community of Murphysburg was created from a 40-acre tract northwest of Joplin Creek that was platted by Patrick Murphy, W.P. Davis, C.W. Elliot, and William Byers. , "The two towns might have remained separate municipalities had not a group of dynamic leaders envisioned a future for their town as a leading metropolitan center if the rival factions could be brought together," wrote Gail Renner in Joplin: From Mining Town to Urban Center. , After Patrick Murphy accepted the name Joplin rather than insisting on Murphysburg, residents of both communities voted to accept a merger. The state legislature approved a special charter on March 23, 1873, giving the new town status as a fourth-class city. , Four years later, the city commissioned Shober and Carqueville Lithographers of Chicago to produce this map of Joplin. The partners hired a Kansas City mapmaker named Augustus Koch to draw a “bird’s eye view” of the city. Koch’s detailed map included the locations of the public schools, churches, mining furnaces and smelters, pump shafts, and the Joplin Hotel at Fourth and Main Streets. , Koch's health began to fail in the mid-1890s. He died of Bright's Disease in Los Angeles on Christmas Day in 1899, at the age of 59. , The Bird's Eye View of Joplin offers an early glimpse into the community four years after incorporation. The grid system was already in place, and as time passed, the city streets, commercial districts, and residential neighborhoods expanded far beyond the borders depicted in this early map. Also, in time these wood framed buildings would be replaced by more substantial structures.