Pike County Agri-Facts
PIKE COUNTY is in the northeastern part of the State.
It is bounded on the north by Ralls County; east by the
Mississippi River which separates it from Illinois; south by
Lincoln and Montgomery Counties; and west by Audrain
and Ralls Counties. It has a land area of 431,000 acres.
About the middle of the eighteenth century, French
exploring expeditions visited Pike County. Later the
Spanish made attempts at settlement, as is shown by the
irregular lines of old grants of land in different parts of
the county. In 1808 Captain Robert Jordan came from
South Carolina with his family and settled upon Buffalo
Creek, about five miles south of the present site of
Louisiana. Fear of the Indians caused him to leave, but in
1811 he returned, accompanied by a number of others
from South Carolina. The first land sales of the public
domain now comprising Pike County were held in the
winter of 1817-18 at St. Louis. The land was sold at the
minimum price of $2.50 per acre.
Pike County was originally a part of the district of St.
Charles. December 14, 1818, the Territorial Legislature
passed an act creating Lincoln and Pike Counties. Pike
County was named in honor of General Zebulon Pike, the
noted explorer. Pike, in 1805, explored the upper
Mississippi, and later Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and
other parts of the West, and discovered Pike's Peak.
When organized Pike, County included all that portion of
Missouri Territory north of Lincoln County, extending to
the Iowa line and west to the limits of the Territory.
Owing to its great size it was facetiously called the "State
of Pike".
Source: Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri
Missouri Agricultural Statistics Service
Missouri Agri-Facts
Pike County Agri-Facts