 The city was laid out in 1860 by H.B.Kidder of the Kidder Land Company in Boston, which was seeking to encourage non-slave owning European immigrants to settle along the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad which at the time was the furthest west railroad in the United States.The city received national publicity in 2004 after a student at the Thayer Learning Center in the community died after not receiving treatment early enough.