Forest City was platted on May 16, 1857, with later additions being filed in 1868. The city was named from the dense forest near the original the town site. A post office called Forest City has been in operation since 1857. The town was incorporated in 1861 and has also been spelled 'Forrest'.
Forest City was originally a significant trading post on the Missouri River but in the 1868 Missouri River flood, the river rerouted to the west. At its peak, 13 steamboats were moored in the docks.
City Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The BNSF railroad still runs trains daily through Forest City on the Napier Subdivision.
Passages that mention Forest City, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Holt County, Missouri1917 · page 430Read the page →
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moved to St. Joseph, where he learned the trade of harness maker. He worked four years at his trade in Forest City and then moved to Oregon and engaged in the telephone business with the Oregon & Forest City Telephone Company. After twelve years of service there he moved to Forest City April 1, 1912, to take charge of the mechanical plant which supplies Oregon and Forest City with electric light and water. He is a self-made man and as he expressed it has hammered out his
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History of Holt County, Missouri1917 · page 194Read the page →
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White’s Ferry was on the Nodaway near the southeast corner of section 4, township 62, range 37. S. C. Collins surveyed, in March, 1860, the state road from Forest City to Maryville, in Nodaway County, by this ferry, and found the distance from Forest City to the ferry to be nineteen miles, thirty-three and one-half chains to the middle of the Nodaway River, and the total distance from Forest City to Maryville thirty-five miles, 59.45 chains. This road runs through Whig Valley. The chain
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Forest City, 1857 to 1926
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Forest City. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
1926Oregon sheet · 1:62,500
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Forest City.
Every building
Forest City, building by building, 1900–1911
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1900Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
On the National Register
1 historic place in Forest City
The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (4), the National Register of Historic Places (1), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System, Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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