The first settlement in this area was a cluster of about five hastily built log cabins and Richard Gentry’s store and tavern. A U.S. Government Land office opened at Franklin in 1818, west of here, offering fertile land for $4 to $6 per acre. The land agent there was named Thomas A. Smith. Landowners named their fledgling town for this nice man. “Smithton” it was, but it lasted only three years.

Smithton, like Franklin, was doomed. Smithton had too little water and Franklin had too much. By 1828, only 10 years after the land office was opened, Franklin was suddenly washed away by the treacherous Missouri River. It had grown to include a newspaper, two academies of learning, a public library, a jail, three taverns, five stores, a tobacco factory, six Baptist Churches and more. Suddenly, Franklin was gone.

Smithton was situated on the hill west of present-day downtown Columbia, approximately where the water tower’s morning shadow touches the ground in the vicinity of Garth Avenue and Walnut Street. The search for a source of “living water” included the digging of a very deep hole into the earth. Having failed in their the first attempt, they dug deeper in a different location -- 60 feet deep. Still, no luck. A third hole was 90 feet down but didn’t produce enough water.

Edwin Stephens explained, in his History of Boone County, that it was unfortunate, but people had not yet discovered that water could be collected in underground cisterns. There was endless water from a spring down the hill -- near Boone County Bank at Providence Road and Walnut Street -- but carrying water up that hill in buckets was torture. Smithton’s cabins were dismantled and rebuilt down the hill where water was readily available.

What was life like in Smithton, when it was one of the westernmost settlements? The cabins had only dirt floors; women made bedcovers and rugs out of worn-out clothing. In winter, those rugs were hung over the small window holes because there was no glass. People went barefooted much of the time, and homes had a library of one book, the Bible. Wagons rolled along the Boone’s Lick Trail in a steady stream, and many families bought land.

An outdoor toilet or “john” was a luxury in the wilderness as “behind a tree” was sufficient. Rainwater from the roof was caught in a wooden barrel where birds and flies polluted it; “wiggle tails” swam there when fly eggs hatched. Salt was needed for tanning hides, pickling cabbage for kraut, curing meat -- and for food. Hunters traded skins for salt at the salt works where Daniel Boone’s sons boiled water from a salt spring. That was a good hunting ground, too, because animals went there to lick the brackish earth where salt had been deposited for centuries.

Men located bee trees in the woods and cut them to harvest the honey. Blackberries, gooseberries, mushrooms and various kinds of nuts were gathered from the woods. People were dependent on each other and were ready to help when needed. The carpenter, tinner, blacksmith and leather craftsmen were very important because covered wagons only brought the bare necessities and the nearest store was about 25 miles away.

Many of the people who settled in this area were from Kentucky. Historians refer to them as responsible, enterprising, intelligent and thrifty. Many of their descendants are here now. And we now have our new school named Smithton. It links us to 176 years of rugged history.