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Walker's loyal natives help town keep spirit
Editor's note: This story continues the series on the namings of area towns and cities that the Daily Mail began last fall.
WALKER -- The 142-year history of Walker is a story of people attracted by the prospects of lively commerce, rich family life and a promising future on the verdant soil of northeast central Vernon County.
Ten miles east-northeast of Nevada, this town of about 275 people is not the place it once was, but enough community spirit abides in residents and natives around the state and nation that Walker Fun Days on the third weekend of September and All School Reunion on June's first Saturday in even numbered years draw good crowds.
"It was a close community, especially when we still had the stores," said longtime citizen Neoma Foreman, who wrote a detailed history titled "Walker, Mo., 1870-1995."
"Like most small towns, we don't have the community we used to because people work everywhere else."
Foreman said Tuesday that the village did well when Berniece Martin and her son Phillip served as mayors from 1966-'80 and from 1986 through the 1990s. "It was always clean," she said.
"The Martins got water and sewer and made sure people kept the junk away from the buildings. They have a long record of service. Phillip is at Moore-Few Care Center in Nevada and his brother, Allen, lives just outside town."
Foreman said Walkerites named their town after Hiram F. Walker, described as "an old and prominent resident" in the 1887 "History of Vernon County, Mo.," and the street that now runs past the junior high-high school for William Leslie after the men donated land for the town to be platted on.
She said it went up with the advent of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, or "Katy," Railroad, which ran passenger trains through Walker until 1955 and freight trains into the mid-1990s.
Digging a three-foot layer of coal underlying the whole village at a depth of two to four feet, strip miners were eventually replaced by Pioneer Coal Co. in the early 1940s. Foreman said the company operated northeast of town for about 10 years until moving to Appleton City in St. Clair County.
"We had a couple of big fires," she said, adding that the peak population was about 700. "The biggest was on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1910, when sparks from a train caused several buildings on Main Street to burn down. The First Baptist Church burned in 1925."
The great-grandfather of another long-tenured citizen, Jenise Burch, "came from Fayette to visit his brother, Dr. Scarlet Preston, met Minnie Belle Thornhill, was smitten with her and decided to stay," said Burch.
Fayette is 170 miles northeast of Walker.
That romance proved of civic benefit as Sanford J. Preston Jr., formerly of the Southwest Mail newspaper in Nevada, founded the Walker Herald in November 1881 and published it until his death at age 77 on May 1, 1931. "Great-granddad had gone to Central Methodist College and traveled west as a young man to strike gold," Burch said. "He edited and published the Herald for 49 1/2 years."
With the junior high-high school of Northeast Vernon County School District educating more than 100 students here, farmers and stockmen continue prospering in this area, as was predicted by the History of Vernon County 125 years ago. NEVC Elementary School is in Schell City, 15 miles northeast of Walker.
"Walker is almost exclusively a prairie township," an anonymous historian said. "The only timber is in the extreme southern part, where there is a narrow strip along the north branch of Clear Creek. The soil is generally excellent and there are some fine farms.
"The existence of so much prairie has had much to do in past time in retarding the growth of the settlement of this township, but the same cause will eventually prove its best fortune. When fully improved, as it will be at no distant day, it will contain some of the best farms in Southwest Missouri."
The history said the township's first settler "was Dr. J.N.B. Dodson, who came from Camden County in 1855 and located near the Dodson Mounds.
"Like many another town, Walker owes its origin to the building of the railroad. It was platted soon after the line was constructed to Fort Scott, Kan., and grew apace. A number of speculators came in and made purchases and there were fair prospects that the town would become a city.
"In time, however, its tide of prosperity ebbed. As it had outgrown its tributary country, it had to wait for the latter to catch up. Although not so large as its founders had desired it might be, Walker is above the average of that class of villages commonly spoken of as little railroad towns and is the resort for purposes of trade of a large section of country.
"It has a full complement of stores and shops, a good hotel and a very creditable little newspaper, the Walker Herald. There is a hack line (horse-drawn wagons) between Walker and El Dorado Springs and many who come from the south to visit those alleged fountains of healing leave the (railroad) cars here."