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Visitors Guide to
Monroe County
Site of the First American Settlement
in the State of Illinois |
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The French had settled in
the Middle Mississippi Valley for nearly 80 years before American pioneers
began settling in the region. The French population of early Illinois was
concentrated in the neighboring counties of St. Clair and Randolph, but
Monroe County was where the settlements of the early Americans were
located. Captain James Moore, a member of George Rogers Clark’s expedition
into the Illinois Country with the 'Long Knives' in 1778, had seen the advantages of the Illinois
Country, and decided take advantage of the land grants offered as pay for
military service in the Revolutionary War. Moore led a party of five
families out of Virginia arriving in Kaskaskia in 1781. In the spring of
1782, Moore and his party moved northward on the Kaskaskia-Cahokia Trail and
settled just south of present day Waterloo at a place the French called La
Belle Fontaine because of the beautiful spring there. Moore built a fort at
the spring as protection from attacks by Native Americans forming the first
American settlement in the state of Illinois. Other pioneer families soon
followed, stopping briefly at the Moore settlement before moving on and
staking claims of their own.
By 1816 the population
had grown large enough that a new county, Monroe, was formed out of portions
of Randolph
and St. Clair Counties. It was named in honor of James Monroe, who had just
served as Secretary of War and who was elected President later
that same year. The town of Columbia was surveyed and platted in 1820 and
was incorporated in 1859. The settlement near Moore’s fort grew into 2
villages, Bellefontaine on the south side of Fountain Creek and Peterstown on the
north. Eventually these two villages became one – Waterloo – which was
incorporated in 1859. In 1848, Jacob Maeys purchased McRoberts' Meadow,
about 10 miles southwest of Waterloo, because the waterpower from the
large spring there would be able to run a sawmill. From this the village
of Maeystown grew. In 1978 this entire village of approximately 150 people
was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and has become a
popular site for visitors to the area.
Monroe
County is just a 30-minute drive south of downtown St. Louis. The drive
along the Great River Road features the rich farmland of the American
Bottom, the tree-lined streets with the century-old buildings of its towns, antique
and specialty shops,
unique restaurants, and a number of historic sites that preserve the
strong German and French heritage of the residents.
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