Southeast Missouri / Lead Belt / Mississippi Corridor
Mine La Motte: among Missouri's oldest lead workings
Mine La Motte, north of Fredericktown, is among the earliest lead-mining sites in Missouri and a French colonial-era anchor for understanding why Southeast Missouri's lead district developed where it did
Mine La Motte sits near Fredericktown in Madison County. It is one of the oldest known lead-mining sites in Missouri. Lead is a soft, heavy metal that people dig out of the ground. Mining here goes back to the French colonial period in the early 1700s. That was the time when France controlled this land.
The eastern Ozarks held a lot of lead ore. (The Ozarks are the rolling, rocky hills of this region.) That ore pulled in some of the first settlers. Mine La Motte became one of the first places where this digging kept going year after year. Later, a bigger mining area called the Lead Belt grew up to the north. So mining did not start with that boom. It started here, much earlier.
Old colonial dates and “firsts” are easy to mix up. So treat any exact claim as something to double-check. The State Historical Society of Missouri and the Missouri State Archives are good places to confirm the story.
References
Where this fits: this note belongs to Madison County. See every local note for the county on its page.