St. Clair County Courier
15 July 1976

Who Remembers

The town of Valley Forge (Missouri) was eventually abandoned, its decline starting from the time operations got into full swing on the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad which was completed in 1858. This town where, in the years before the Civil War, a thriving community existed. It’s chief industry was the iron smelter, where blooms were made from the ore hauled over the plank road from Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob.
At the Battle of Pilot Knob on September 27, 1864, that about 9,000 Confederate troops under the leadership of Gen. Sterling Price tried to storm the Union garrison of Fort Davidson, commanded by Gen. Thomas Ewing. There was about twenty minutes of dreadful carnage, in which about one thousand assaulting Confederates were killed or wounded, before the order to besieged Fort, about seventy five Union soldiers lay dead. Before the Confederates could rally their forces and implement an artillery barrage the next day, the Union forces slipped away in the night.
Just a brief distance away, near the now known town of Stanton, forces were operating powder kilns and leaching vats in a cave. The gun powder mill and plant was captured and destroyed by Quantrill Irregulars under General Price’s orders. All of this colorful history is now in our past, and little remains to remind us of these events. The cave is now known world wide as Meramec Caverns, named for the river which flows by its entrance. There has however been more attention focused on its more recent history and because of this, has brought Caverns world fame. In the 1870s the same cave was used by Jesse James and his Gang as a hideout.