Joplin

Joplin grew up fast on lead and zinc money in the late 1800s, boomtown saloons and opera houses springing up almost overnight around the mines, and then grew again decades later as one of the classic stops on Route 66. Lia and I arrived following the old alignment through town, past a scatter of mid-century motor courts and diners still trading on the Mother Road’s mystique, and found a downtown of handsome turn-of-the-century brick buildings that felt both proud and a little tender — a town that has been knocked down hard and gotten back up.

Route 66 and the mining boom

We stopped at the Route 66 Mural Park downtown, a whole city block of vividly painted walls depicting the highway’s golden age — chrome bumpers, drive-in signs, a soda fountain scene bright enough to photograph from any angle. Afterward we drove out to the site of the old Kansas City Southern shops and a few remaining mining headframes on the edge of town, rusted reminders of the underground tunnels that once honeycombed this whole corner of Missouri, so extensively mined that sinkholes are still an occasional local hazard. Joplin’s Route 66 pedigree runs deep enough that the road’s founding meeting, in 1926, is said to have taken place just up the highway in a hotel not far from here.

Rebuilding after the tornado

On May 22, 2011, an EF5 tornado carved a mile-wide scar clean across the south side of Joplin, destroying thousands of homes and a hospital in minutes. We drove that path now marked by a “Butterfly Garden and Overlook,” a memorial park built where a middle school once stood, its rows of native prairie flowers and a bronze angel statue standing over what is now simply open sky. A volunteer tending the garden told us, without any prompting, about the tree of life sculpture nearby made from a storm-splintered oak — and about how neighbors who lost everything rebuilt block by block rather than leave. It’s a quiet, moving stop, not dramatic so much as deeply sincere.

Getting There

Joplin sits in Missouri’s southwest corner, about three hours south of Kansas City and two and a half hours northeast of Tulsa, right along I-44 where old Route 66 still parallels the interstate. Joplin Regional Airport offers a handful of connecting flights, though most visitors drive in, often as part of a longer Route 66 road trip. Downtown and its murals are easily walkable once parked, but a car is needed to reach the tornado memorial and outlying mining sites.