Belmont is an extinct town in Mississippi County, on the eastern border of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

at the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

. The

GNIS The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

classifies it as a populated place under the name "Belmont Landing".

History

Belmont was

plat In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bea ...

ted in 1853, and named after

August Belmont August Belmont Sr. (born August Schönberg; December 8, 1813November 24, 1890) was a German-American financier, diplomat, politician and party chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and also a horse-breeder and racehorse owner. He wa ...

, a businessman interested in the site. A post office called Belmont Landing was in operation from 1867 until 1869, and a post office called Belmont from 1869 until 1923. Belmont was the scene of a Civil War battle, the

Battle of Belmont The Battle of Belmont was fought on November 7, 1861 in Mississippi County, Missouri. It was the first combat test in the American Civil War for Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the future Union Army general in chief and eventual U.S. president, ...

in 1861. The community lends its name to the Columbus-Belmont State Park, a Civil War site across the Mississippi River in

Hickman County, Kentucky Hickman County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,521, making it the third-least populous county in Kentucky. Its county seat is Clinton. The county was formed in 1821. It is the le ...

. After the Reconstruction era, whites asserted their dominance, often by violence and intimidation. In May 1905, a mob of 200 to 300 whites

lynched Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...

Tom Witherspoon, aka Robert Pettigrew, an African-American man, for alleged kidnapping and threats against a white man.Danny Lewis, "This Map Shows Over a Century of Documented Lynchings in the United States"
''Smithsonian Magazine'', 27 January 2017; accessed 12 April 2018 This event took place during an era of increased violence by whites against blacks due to economic problems and social tensions. A series of floods (1912, 1922, and 1937) inundated the town of Belmont, particularly the 1937 flood. Many people moved away after this destruction and the town became abandoned; the post office closed in 1923.

References

Ghost towns in Missouri Former populated places in Mississippi County, Missouri {{MississippiCountyMO-geo-stub