Filmed on Thursday, March 23, 20223, I drive around the village of Bonne Terre, Missouri to see what's going on.
Bonne Terre is a city in St. Francois County, Missouri, United States with a population of 6,864 at the 2010 census.
Bonne Terre is part of the Southeast Missouri Lead District, an area of rolling hills of the Ozark Plateau with elevations up to 300 feet. The ground is mostly red clay over a base of limestone. The area contains the highest concentration of galena (lead sulfide) in the world.
The community was originally part of the Louisiana Territory and settled by Frenchmen in 1720 after they discovered lead ore. Two Frenchmen, La Motte and Philip Francois Renault had left France in 1719 with 200 miners in search of minerals as part of the Company of the West. Surface miners referred to it as La Bonne Terre around 1825, meaning "the good soil" because of the lead. In 1828, St. Anne, the first Catholic chapel in St Francois county was built here.
In 1864, Bonne Terre Mine was established by St. Joseph lead mining company which was incorporated in NYC the same year. In 1865, a new superintendent, J. C. Winslow, brought a number of Cornish miners. Underground mining began in 1869. After a post office was established in 1868, the corporate name of the town, "St. Joe´s mines" changed to Bonne Terre.
Major lead mining operations from the 1870s also included the Desloge Lead Company, and Doe Run. The Desloge mines were started by Firmin V. Desloge, and above-ground works were bounded approximately by present-day Division Street on the west, Benham Street on the south, Route 67 on the east, and the township line to the north.
In 1880, Bone Terre was platted as a town. The miners were local small farmers, timber cutters and rock quarrymen supplementing their income, and later Hungarian and other Slavic and southern European immigrants In 1890, the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railroad hauled ore to Herculaneum smelters. The Bonne Terre Depot from 1909 still exists.
At the beginning of the 20th century, St. Joe Lead was the only one of initially dozens of mining companies left, as it had bought up the remaining companies. In 1962, the mine closed. Lead mine tailings were used as paving gravel for decades.
In 1974, Bonne Terre Mine, and in 1984 St. Joe Lead Company Administration Building were listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The mine was the first in the network of St. Joe Minerals lead mines that led to Missouri producing 70 percent of the United States' lead in the Southeast Missouri Lead District. The mine was a target of Price's Raid during the American Civil War. The mine is open for tours and is also known as a scuba diving attraction.
Chat dumps or mine tailing piles remain until today; lead dust contaminated the surrounding area and was a hazard to residents. Only in 1992, the Bonne Terre Mine Tailings Site was listed as a Superfund Site.
As of 2021, over 1,400 residential yards have been remediated. The Bonne Terre East Tailings Flat is still used as a repository for lead-contaminated soils. Because lead levels in fish downstream of the mining area are elevated above World Health Organization Standards, the state of Missouri advises people not to eat fish they catch from the Big River.
Bonne Terre is home to the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, a roughly 3000-bed prison of adult males who may have substance abuse issues or are mentally disabled. Since April 2005, Missouri has conducted all of its executions there.
As of the census of 2010, there were 6,864 people, 1,634 households, and 1,063 families living in the city.
The racial makeup of the city was 79.60% White, 18.72% Black or African American, 0.34% Native American, 0.20% Asian, 0.10% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 0.10% from other races, and 0.93% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.35% of the population. #driving #travel #drivingtour
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