Herculaneum is a city in Jefferson County, Missouri, and is a suburb of St. Louis. The population was 4,273 at the 2020 United States Census. The City of Herculaneum was the first county seat of Jefferson County from January 1, 1819, to 1839. The city celebrated its bicentennial throughout 2008.
The city received the "Tree City USA" designation by the Arbor Day Foundation for 11 consecutive years, 2007 through 2017. The city is the honorary hometown of the 40th Airlift Squadron, "The Screaming Eagles," from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.
Origins
Herculaneum was laid out by Moses Austin and Samuel Hammond in 1808 as a shipping point on the Mississippi River closer to Austin's lead mines in Potosi than was Ste. Genevieve.
The town was named after the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Austin is said to have chosen the name because the limestone ledges overlooking the Mississippi River resembled a Roman amphitheatre.
Shot towers were constructed next to the bluffs to manufacture lead ammunition, and lead cannonballs from Herculaneum were used in the War of 1812. Lead smelting by the Doe Run Company is no longer operating and under a shutdown process. It was a major industry in Herculaneum until its closure due to inability to match increased EPA regulations due to environmental and health effects.
The name "Herculaneum" is a reference to the Ancient Roman city of Herculaneum which was the chief supplier of lead for the Roman Republic and Empire.
History
In 1798, Moses Austin, a settler from Connecticut, obtained a Spanish land grant of one square league (approximately 3 square miles) of land after learning of the richness of the area's rich mineral deposits. After bringing in equipment and workmen from Virginia, he began mining and smelting lead despite frequent problems with the neighboring Osage tribe. In 1808, Austin and Samuel Hammond laid out a town at the mouth of Joachim Creek. The purpose of the new town was to serve as a shipping point for the lead smelted at mines in Jefferson and Washington Counties. It is believed the town was named by Austin, who called it Herculaneum because the limestone strata were so eroded that they resembled seats in the amphitheater of the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum buried by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
The first post office in Jefferson County was at Herculaneum, established soon after the town was laid out, and it remained the only post office in the county for nearly thirty years.
By 1813, three shot towers had been constructed on the bluffs. These were designed for the production of shot balls by dropping molten lead through copper sieves. The balls were then caught in a water basin and taken to an adjoining building, to be turned through cylinders to round and smooth the pellets for use as projectiles in firearms.
On December 8, 1818, Jefferson County, along with seven other counties, was formed from parts of Saint Louis and Ste. Genevieve Counties by an Act of the Territory by the Missouri Territorial Legislature. In 1819, Herculaneum was named as the county seat.
At this time Herculaneum was described as a town having between thirty and forty homes, three stores, a post office, a jail, a court building, and a school. Herculaneum's fortunes declined when the county seat was relocated to Hillsboro in 1839 and when the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway bypassed the town in the early 1850s. The community experienced a revival starting in 1887 when the St. Joseph Lead Company chose Herculaneum as a lead smelting site, and the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railroad ran track into town.
In 1892, the first operation of the smelter began with the operation of calcine furnaces, two blast furnaces, a refinery, and a powerhouse for the generation of steam and electricity. The smelting operations are the largest in the United States, producing approximately 225,000 tons of refined lead annually. They are operated by the Doe Run Company, which bought the operations in 1981.