Founding year: the first Kidder Township post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).
History grade
What drives Kidder Township’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Kidder Township is more historic than 38% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
C+
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Kidder Township’s overall grade.
Missouri towns list about as much on the Register as the country (a typical Missouri town has 2.4 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Kidder Township’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (23% of Missouri towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C− to B−. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±7.1 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Kidder Township’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Peaked at 357 in 1900; 267 people lived here in 2020.
15 censuses, 1880–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Kidder Township’s Wikipedia page.
The story so far
Kidder Township, in brief
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Kidder Township yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Kidder is a city in northwest Caldwell County, Missouri. The population was 267 at the 2020 census. The city was laid out in 1860 by H.B. Kidder or (Henry P. Kidder), of the Kidder Land Company in Boston, which was seeking to encourage non-slave owning European immigrants to settle along the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad which at the time was the furthest west railroad in the United States. The city received national publicity in 2004 after a student at the Thayer Learning Center in the community died after not receiving treatment early enough. In 2009 the Center was sold to become the White Buffalo Academy. The campus was formerly Thayer College and Thayer High School. Thayer College wa…
Its first post office opened in 1860. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 1,081 to 1,014 (-6%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
By decade
No old photos in the archives yet
Weddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
Be the first to add onePhotograph a print flat, in daylight, no flash.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Kidder Township. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
1924Polo 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 Kidder Township.
Places that used to be
Old corners, places now gone and burying grounds
Old hamlets and crossroads still carry their names on the map.
Hamlets and corners on the map
Barwick
Gone or out of use
Barwick SchoolschoolCenter SchoolschoolKinney SchoolschoolManson SchoolschoolPrairie Gem SchoolschoolPrairie Town SchoolschoolWyckoff Schoolschool
4cemeteries and burying grounds inside Kidder Township
Cameron Memorial GardensKenneyKidderMcDaniel
Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Stories next door
History across the town line
Each neighbor’s History grade, on the same three inputs.
The Kidder Township post office opened in 1860, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Kidder Township rank for history?
Kidder Township is more historic than 38% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Kidder Township?
19% of Kidder Township’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±7.1 points), against a typical 8.4% for a Missouri town; the median home was built in 1985.
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).
From U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
