Route 66 - Rolla, Missouri

For a relatively small place, Rolla produces a lot of professional sports men and women, and also an impressive crop of politicians. Although incomes are a little below the national average, the surrounding area and amenities help rate the town higher than it might otherwise sit for quality of life.

In terms of its history, it's a relatively short one - the first house within the current Rolla city limits was built in 1844 by one John Webber. The following year, the railway came to town - or at least the reconnaissance mission did - led by James Abert, the first professor of Civil Engineering at the Missouri School of Mines, which later became Missouri S&T. The official town founder, however, was Edmund Ward Bishop, a construction contractor who was tasked with the job of building that branch of the Southwest Railroad.

There are two entertaining stories about the name; both might be true, or at least contain a grain of truth. In the 1860s, Rolla and neighbouring Dillon were in competition to be the county seat. Rolla won, but part of Dillon's consolation prize was to choose the name of the new city, which they did - after a particularly useless hunting dog. The official version is that it is a phonetic corruption of Raleigh in the emerging North Carolina accent, the origin of many of the settlers.

The modern Stonehenge reconstruction in the grounds of Missouri S&T is a must-see; partial, and a scale model it might be, not to mention erected with the use of modern equipment, but it underlines rather than detracts from the fact that the original prehistoric monument was an incredible feat of engineering.



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