Last time we were in this area, we stayed at a private campground called Camelot which was in Poplar Bluff. While we were there, we checked out the Corps of Engineers Park nearby called St. Francis River and liked what we saw. This was definitely a good pick as the park was remodeled in 2019 and all sites are full hook up. We were in #12 and it was right by the old cemetery and very private. At the back of the site, you can see the River, which was pretty high and muddy.
We are usually pleased with Army Corps of Engineers Parks and they are often much less expensive than private campgrounds. Once I turn 62, the price will be cut in half which will be even better. When we had visited this park in the fall of 2020, there were a lot of political banners for Trump. But fortunately, this time, there were none. We arrived on a Monday and the park was not crowded at all.
I saw an eagle fly overhead and we took a lovely walk near the river on the Greenville bike trail. The weather was absolutely perfect. Greenville is built on the ruins of the old town of Greenville. The town was later moved up to higher ground and is still the county seat of Wayne County despite the fact that Piedmont is much bigger. The new Grenville is pretty dismal. There is a walking tour throughout the park that marks where a number of the buildings of Old Greenville once stood.
There is also a historical marker at one the of the Trail of Tears river crossings. In December of 1838, a group of 1100 displaced Cherokee Indians passed through Old Greenville, during their grueling 770-mile, 103-day "Trail of Tears" journey to their new home in the Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
Prior to the Civil War, Greenville was a regular stop on the route of two stagecoach lines. During the war, the town was part of a vast borderland contested by both the North and South. On July 20, 1862, a small but significant skirmish was fought here. From that point on, there were continued skirmishes between the same Union and Confederate groups that happened all over SE Missouri. The cemetery is quite interesting, there are four prominent Confederate graves and it is maintained by volunteers. There is a section that is fenced which is apparently the Union Cemetery and then outside of that are a number of other graves which must have been prominent locals like the Bollinger’s.
Between 1900 and 1910, Greenville reached its population peak with over a thousand residents. At that time, the town was served by the Williamsville Greenville & St. Louis Railway and the Holladay-Klotz Land & Lumber Co. employed more than 700 people. Once the timber boom ended in the early 1910s, Greenville entered a slow economic decline. The Depression years of the 1930s were particularly difficult. It was also in the 1930s, after several disastrous floods in the lower Mississippi Valley, that the federal government began to build dams and levees to help control flooding and limits it effects. The Wappapello Dam was part of that effort.