Editing Carterville, Missouri (section)

==History==
While one James Carter settled in Jasper County in 1841, the land on which Carterville was built was originally owned by his son, James Gilbert Leroy Carter, who created a farm in the 1860’s.<ref name=History>{{cite web|url= https://cartervillemo.com/history |title=The History of Carterville|publisher=Carterville, Missouri|accessdate=October 31, 2021}}</ref>  The town considers itself founded in 1875, when a post office called Carterville opened that year.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?task=display&state=MO&county=Jasper |title=Post Offices |publisher=Jim Forte Postal History |accessdate=18 October 2016 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20161018234000/http://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?task=display&state=MO&county=Jasper |archivedate=18 October 2016 }}</ref>  However, the settlement was not officially incorporated until 1882.<ref name=History/>  Early Carterville was little more than a lead-mining camp, one of many in the [[Tri-State district|tri-state mining district]] in southwestern Missouri, southeastern Kansas and northwestern Oklahoma.<ref name=History/>  It nevertheless thrived, and at one time had a population of over 12,000 residents, making it larger than nearby Webb City.<ref name=History/>

When interurban transportation came to the mining district in 1889, it was in the form of a [[horsecar]] line (other sources say a mule road) between Webb City and Carterville.<ref name=Records>{{cite web|url=http://files.shsmo.org/manuscripts/rolla/R0052.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210924065805/https://files.shsmo.org/manuscripts/rolla/R0052.pdf |archive-date=2021-09-24 |url-status=live |title = R52 Southwest Missouri Railroad Company. Records, 1892-1941. 5 volumes, 1 folder|publisher=State Historical Society of Missouri|accessdate=October 29, 2021}}</ref><ref name=Electric>{{cite web|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=ckQ_AQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Southwest+Missouri+Railroad+Company%22&pg=PA543 |title=The Southwest Missouri Railroad Company|year=1906|publisher=Electric Railway Review, September 1906, pp. 543-548|accessdate=October 28, 2021}}</ref>  That operation was absorbed in 1892 by the Southwest Missouri Electric Railway Company, later the [[Southwest Missouri Railroad Company]], and by 1894 an electrified streetcar line linked Carterville to Webb City and Joplin in one direction, and [[Prosperity, Missouri|Prosperity]] in the other.<ref name=Electric/>  Two additional rail lines, that of the [[Missouri Pacific Railway]] and the [[Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis Railway]], ran down the west border of Carterville.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://genealogytrails.com/mo/jasper/hist_county.htm |title=Welcome to Jasper County, Missouri, County History|publisher=Genealogy Trails|accessdate=October 31, 2021}}</ref>

The town began its decline in size after [[World War I]],  when the mining industry began to dry up.<ref name=History/>