(This is the next monthly installment of our series looking into the 200-year history of Monroe County in honor of its Bicentennial. This article examines the years 1900 to 1920.)

Pictured is the old St. Louis Valley & Iron Mountain Railroad as its passes through Valmeyer in the early 1900s. The building on the left is Hutter’s Hotel Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlor. (submitted photo)

Nationally, it is known as the “Progressive Era” under presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson. Locally, the early 1900s were a time of change and, perhaps strangely, a shrinking of population.

Monroe County entered 1900 with a population of 13,847, according to the federal census. It was also getting ready to see a change in the way people and freight moved about, with steel rails coming to replace relatively rough roads and paths.

In 1901, St. Louis was already a Middle America rail hub with heavy east-west traffic.  The St. Louis Valley & Iron Mountain Railroad went into Illinois, and set about extending southward through the bottoms.  First, a single track ran south from Dupo, through Columbia, Valmeyer and on to Chester and Thebes. A second track started from Thebes, northward back to Dupo and connections to the St. Louis hub.

There were a number of impacts. When the track system was completed in about 1907, it spelled the demise of the steamboat trade on this side of the river, moving that traffic inland.  The workers who built the railroad needed support such as lodging and food, so numerous restaurants and boarding houses sprung up. More permanent development included the quarries that supplied rock for rail beds, and later, for other construction.

The year 1901 was also a bad time for health matters, as smallpox and diphtheria made many citizens ill. There were not a lot of cures for those ailments then, and many perished.  Standing water – a breeding place for mosquitoes then and now – was blamed.

One social impact of the train system was rail access to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.  Numerous excursions took Monroe County citizens to the big event in hours versus a day trip each way by wagon.  And fair goers came this way too, coming to visit Illinois Caverns — advertised as the “Mammoth Cave of Illinois” —  near Burksville.

By 1905, the old courthouse, currently the square portion in the center of the old part of the structure, and then half a century old, was deemed too small to house county government activities. A referendum of the voters authorized adding the north and south wings to the existing building. They were completed in 1907.

Perhaps having grown with the railroad, Valmeyer was chartered as a village in 1909.
Seeing the impact of the railroad on traffic, an electric streetcar line – the East St. Louis-Columbia-Waterloo Railroad — was completed in 1912, speeding passenger and some freight movement between the communities.

World War I had been going on in Europe since 1914, and the U.S. entered the conflict in 1917. The heavy German population probably led to some tensions.

Although records are incomplete, we do know more than 550 men from Monroe County served in various capacities in the military then.

Of course, 1916 marked 100 years – a centennial – for Monroe County. With this celebration time, there were plans for a formal program at the Waterloo High School complete with several area bands performing appropriate music.

Missing as plans went forward, though, were the whereabouts of the surplus Civil War cannon that had made much noise and created as much controversy in the previous century.

John M. Burkhardt of Renault, who served as Monroe County sheriff from 1906-1910, reportedly said the cannon “might just be” at the bottom of the well in the courthouse square. Without speculating on how he might have known that, the brass cannon was located there, raised, cleaned and readied for the Centennial celebration by being fired hourly, on Jan. 6, 1916. The issue of scared pets, broken windows and other matters was back!

There’s no specific record of follow-on firings other than a newspaper note that it was fired for holidays and patriotic events until 1918.

In 1918, the tradition of firing the cannon on New Year’s Eve was again reported – but this time it exploded! A newspaper report said: “Its remnants scattered to the four winds of heaven.”  The report noted that some pieces were found immediately.
It went on to report that when students returned to school after Christmas and New Year’s vacation, a leak was noted in the high school roof.  A piece of the cannon estimated to weigh 20 pounds was found inside the building – some two blocks from the scene of the New Year’s Eve explosion.

No documented remaining pieces of the cannon are known with certainty today.
Revisiting the population figures – 13,847 in 1900 – these numbers dropped to 13,508 in 1910 and continued downward to 12,839 in 1920. As previously reported, in these times before antibiotics and modern vaccines, diseases were rampant and deadly.