The city of Danville: How a once-lively community lost its chance to prosper and became a ghost town

The city of Danville was platted in July 1848 by Missourian Daniel Robinson, but town records were not filed with the Montgomery County courthouse until March 1851, Williams said.

For decades, Danville was a thriving town filled with businesses, merchants, churches, a hotel, a stage coach stop, schools, physicians and farmers, she said. However, the town also prospered from large slave plantations. That all changed when the city of Danville was confronted with the Civil War—and the progression of the railroad.

When the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 ended slavery after the war, it had a negative effect on the economics of large plantations thriving off slave labor in the area.

In the early 1870s, Danville residents were suffering the loss of family members who died in the Civil War, Williams said. Home deeds changed frequently at this time as families left the city.

“There were people mortgaging their land; people lost their lands; husbands and brothers didn’t come back [from the war],” Williams said.

Danville’s second most-fatal mistake was refusing to allow the International and Great Northern Railroad Company to build through the town in 1870, Williams said. So the railroad bypassed Danville, instead moving 4 miles southeast to begin developing the city of Willis in 1870.

While Polish immigrants settled briefly in Danville after, Williams said the town never recovered and was slowly abandoned as land was sold for farming.