Editing Maitland, Missouri (section)

==History==
Maitland was [[plat]]ted on May 12, 1880.<ref name="GH">{{cite book | title=Gone home: Directory of the deceased and items of history of Holt County, Missouri, 1837-1981 | publisher=Holt County Missouri Historical Society | author=Derr, Eileen | year=1981}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RfAuAAAAYAAJ | title=How Missouri Counties, Towns and Streams Were Named | publisher=The State Historical Society of Missouri | author=Eaton, David Wolfe | year=1916 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RfAuAAAAYAAJ/page/n71 174]}}</ref> The town is named after John Skirving Maitland, who was a surveyor for the [[Nodaway Valley Railroad]] (the construction company for the [[Kansas City, St. Joseph and Council Bluffs Railroad]]) that arrived in Maitland in 1880 when its superintendent, John Fisk Barnard, purchased the land for the town from John S. and Delila Swope. The railroad would eventually be taken over by the [[Burlington Northern Railroad]] before eventually being abandoned.<ref>"Blue Grass Mecca", Biographical sketches from
Maitland Centennial, 1980</ref>
[[Image:David Ward King-1 En.jpg|thumb|left|150px|David Ward King, Inventor of the King Road Drag]]
Maitland is a farming community. One of the farmers from Maitland was [[David Ward King]], inventor and promoter of the [[King road drag]]—an invention that essentially was two logs lashed together and dragged behind horse or mule teams that was an effective and inexpensive method to grade dirt roads. It was the horse-drawn forerunner of the modern road grader. The invention came at the time [[Henry Ford]] started to mass-produce automobiles. Before its invention, wet country roads became muck and were often nearly impassable. The use of the King Road Drag kept rural roads solid, even when wet, which rendered them passable all the time. These improved rural roads made possible both the advent of the automobile and rural mail delivery.<ref>Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, December 6, 1999, ''Don't believe the Internet hype: the real E-commerce revolution happened off-line.'' [http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/clicks.pdf Historic Importance of King Road Drag] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091231004344/http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/clicks.pdf |date=2009-12-31 }}</ref>

In the first half of the 20th century, Maitland claimed to have the largest [[Smooth Meadow-grass|bluegrass]] seed producing farm in the world.  John Q. Weller was to claim that the {{convert|10000000|lb}} of seed produced on his farm was more than the harvested seed output of the entire state of Kentucky.<ref>Daily Capital News - Jefferson City, Missouri - July 10, 1937</ref> In some years, Weller would get permission to pile up bumper crops of seed on the city streets.  During the harvest time in late June/early July, the town hosted a Bluegrass festival.

Bluegrass seed production in the late 1950s/early 1960s moved to farming communities in [[Idaho]], [[Oregon]] and [[Washington (state)|Washington]]. The Festival had been discontinued.

In 1975 the Maitland Community Betterment Association celebrated the bluegrass stripping heritage with the slogan, "Home of the Strippers."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5394026/maitland_home_of_strippers_may_22_1975/|title = Maitland Home of Strippers May 22, 1975|newspaper = The Maryville Daily Forum|date = 22 May 1975|page = 3}}</ref>