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SPRINGFIELD,
MISSOURI,
AND SURROUNDINGS • 1889
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statement and is not likely to for years to come. Within less than nine
years the city has advanced from 7,500 to THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE. Within
that period, too, a large and prosperous jobbing trade and a score of manufacturing
industries have been developed,—street railways, electric light, gas and
water works have been established; the Gulf Railway and its accompanying
shops and offices, the new opera house, hundreds of new business houses,
3,000 homes, and a score of school-houses and churches have been built,
carrying the city from the modest estate of a provincial country town up
to the dignity of a cosmopolitan city, the acknowledged metropolis for one
of the grand divisions of a great State. It has made this remarkable advancement
without the aid of speculative booms. Its growth has been natural, steady,
strong and healthful, and is the outcome of forces that inhere to the situation,
and are in nowise extraneous or transient. First among these influencing
causes is a FORTUNATE LOCATION, in the heart of a new and fast growing country,
large and rich enough to foster a city of 200,000 souls—a country whose
extent and splendid resources have already been briefly sketched in these
pages. From Springfield, northeast to St. Louis, is 240 miles, Kansas City
lies 200 miles northwest, Memphis 285 miles southeast, Little Rock 235 miles
south, and Port Smith 178 miles southwest. Full half the country within
this great radius, naturally, and of right, belongs to Springfield. Better
still, than title deeds, she holds this splendid domain by right of possession,
and has within it no rival to dispute her claim. Within this region are
forests, coal fields, lead, iron, zinc, antimony, copper, manganese, fire
clays and agricultural and horticultural interests great enough to build
one of the mighty inland cities of the continent, and, if such a metropolis
be not built here within the next twenty years, it will be the fault of
the people of Springfield themselves. From a purely local standpoint, the
city is more “BEAUTIFUL FOR SITUATION” than any other town of magnitude
in the Southwest. It stands upon a series of charming wooded elevations,
abounds in fine building sites, finely shaded streets and avenues, and from
end to end is a beautiful tree-embowered city, whose elegant homes and deeply
shaded lawns have an air of amplitude and leisurely comfort in refreshing
contrast with the pinched and over-crowded towns of the East. It has ADMIRABLE
NATURAL DRAINAGE, and from its commanding elevation on the crown of the
Ozark divide, 1,400 feet above the sea, enjoys a clear, crisp, invigorating
atmosphere and a measure of health quite unknown to the average city of
its class. The city itself, with a good scope of outlying country, is a
BEAUTIFUL NATURAL PARK, to whose native graces of billowy woodland, charming
slopes, intervales, ravines and clear rock springs and brooks, the town
builders have added numberless embellishments of art, until the whole situation
is aglow with scenic attractions. THE NATIONAL BOULEVARD, nearly 100 feet
wide and finely paved, leads out of the city three miles southward to the
National and Confederate Cemeteries, where sleep hundreds of fallen heroes
of neighboring battle fields, in burial grounds of surpassing beauty. The
boulevard is one of the finest drives in the country. On the north side
are delightful wood-fringed drives to “Doling’s Park,” just on the border
of the city, and half a dozen miles further out is the PERCY CAVE, which
reaches away into the cavernous depths of (next
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