Editing Carter County, Missouri (section)

===Mid-Continent Iron Company===
In 1917 Frank Larabee, E. H. Busick and others came to Carter County and formed the [[Mid-Continent Iron Company]]. After purchasing property about two miles north of [[Fremont, Missouri|Fremont]] they established a smelter with the intention of producing [[pig iron]] from ore shipped from Michigan. By November 1918 the plant was ready for production.

A town named Midco, after the Mid-Continent Iron Company, arose as people moved into the area first to build the smelter and afterward to work at the plant. At its peak in 1920 the town had in excess of 3000 inhabitants, which was about half of the entire population of Carter County at the time.

Like the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company before it, the Mid-Continent Iron Company built its own railroad system to transport the wood needed to fire the [[blast furnace]]. While the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company harvested the virgin pine forests, the Mid-Continent Iron Company harvested the hardwoods from which to make the [[charcoal]] they needed to operate their blast furnace. Typically 180 cords of wood a day was converted into charcoal to operate the furnace. The company had two small and five larger locomotives running on their railroad system to haul the wood to their plant.

At the outbreak of [[World War I]] the U. S. government demanded that a modern chemical plant be installed at Midco. They wanted the byproducts coming from the wood as it was being converted to charcoal, byproducts such as [[Methanol|wood alcohol]], tar, [[calcium acetate]] and other wood oils. Thus in addition to the iron works, Midco became the site of a sprawling chemical plant.

The global [[1918 flu pandemic|flu pandemic of 1918-1920]] hit the community of Midco in some cases wiping out whole families. At its peak there were two crews digging graves day and night. Of the 100-200 victims of the flu buried in the Midco Cemetery only 6 have tombstones.

With the end of World War I there was no longer any demand for the products the company was producing and so in 1921 the Mid-Continent Iron Company closed. With the closing of the plant the people moved away and by 1930 Midco was nearly a ghost town. Today little remains to show that what was once the largest community in Carter County even existed.<ref>Dr. Gene Oakley, "A History of Carter County, Sesquicentennial Edition" pages 128-136 (2007)</ref><ref>West Carter County Genealogical Society, "History & Families of Carter County Missouri" pages 16-17 (2006)</ref>