OSAGE COUNTY — As America celebrates its 250th birthday in 2026, history is often measured through wars, presidents, and political movements.

In Osage County, it can also be measured in farmsteads.

Despite covering just over 600 square miles and having a population of about 13,000, Osage County ranks third in Missouri with 230 Century Farms.

Each farm has its own story. Together, they provide an unusual timeline of American history, showing what was happening in the nation while families were establishing farms that, in many cases, remain in the same family today.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, Osage County did not yet exist. The land that would eventually become the county was home to the Osage people, while the region remained under Spanish control.

Twenty-seven years later, the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States, bringing what would become Osage County into American territory.

The following year, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled the Missouri River past what is now Chamois, documenting a landscape that would soon begin attracting settlers.

By 1821, Missouri had become the nation’s 24th state.

Just 11 years later, in 1832, the farm currently owned by the Townley family was established, becoming the oldest Century Farm in present-day Osage County. Andrew Jackson was president, the Erie Canal had recently transformed transportation in the East, and America was continuing its westward expansion.

Four years later, in 1836, while news of the Battle of the Alamo spread across the nation during the Texas Revolution, the farm currently owned by Harold G. Brendel was established. According to Missouri Century Farm records, the property’s founder was Godfrey Schwartze, Brendel’s great-great-great-grandfather.

The nation soon faced the Panic of 1837, one of America’s first major financial crises. Even as banks failed and the economy struggled, farms continued to be established in what was then Gasconade County, including farms currently owned by the Falter, Luebbert, and Luecke families.

In 1840, while William Henry Harrison was elected president, farms currently owned by the Boessen, Brandt, and Schauwecker families were established.

Osage County itself was organized in 1841. By then, farms currently owned by the Muenks family and Steve and Joyce Boehm had already been established, and many more would soon follow.

The 1840s also brought one of the most significant influences on Osage County’s development: German immigration. A patriotic program presented last month at Zion St. Peters United Church of Christ reflected on that period of immigration and the role German settlers played in shaping central Missouri.

Thousands of immigrants left Germany seeking opportunity in America, and many settled in central Missouri. Communities including Westphalia, Rich Fountain, Freeburg, and others grew from those settlement patterns, while more Century Farms were established across the county.

Among the farms established during the 1840s and 1850s are those currently owned by the Wilde, Wilson, Clark, Francis, Winkelman, Klebba, Lock, Haller, Buersmeyer, Luebbert, Massman, Luebbering, Huebler, Matthews, Porting, Wiegers, Schaefer, Baker, Scott, Fick, Burgess, Muenks, Ortbals, Campbell, Kliethermes, Juergensmeyer, and Hemeyer families. By 1860, farms currently owned by the Walker and Backes families had also been established.

When the Civil War began in 1861, many of Osage County’s Century Farms had already been operating for nearly 30 years. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president the previous year, many of those same farms were already well established.

Missouri’s status as a border state divided communities and families, but farm work continued. Crops still had to be planted and harvested, livestock still needed care, and families continued building lives despite the uncertainty of war.

The decade of the 1860s saw another wave of Century Farms established. Among them were farms currently owned by the Deeken, Fennewald, Keilholz, Falter, Jaegers, Klebba, Lauberth, Vocks, Carnes, Hagenhoff, Huesgen, Lockwood, Struemph, McDaniel, Thomas, Radmacher, Bax, Robertson, Schmitz, Weber, Crede, Gentges, Ritter, Welschmeyer, Berhorst, Plassmeyer, Horstman, Rudroff, Hoffman, Bacon, Brune, Adams, Ridenhour, Troesser, Hurst, and Nilges families.

Just one year later, Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, encouraging settlement across the American West. While thousands of new homesteads were being claimed on the frontier, Osage County already had dozens of farms that would endure for generations. Farms currently owned by the Falter, Jaegers, Klebba, Lauberth, Vocks, Carnes, Hagenhoff, and Huesgen families trace their beginnings to 1862.

When the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, linking the nation from coast to coast, it opened new markets for American agriculture, including Missouri farmers. By then, farms currently owned by the Clark, Plassmeyer, Rost, Troesser, Helle, Bauer, Neuner, Borgmeyer, Vogel, Groene, Mengwasser, Rehagen, Morfeld, Boessen, Laughlin, Myers, Keilholz, Haslag, Wansing, Neier, Bird, and Huhmann Volmert families had been established or soon would be.

In 1876, as the United States celebrated its Centennial in Philadelphia, many of today’s Osage County Century Farms were already established. While Americans reflected on the nation’s first hundred years, families here were tending farms that have now remained in the same families for more than 150 years.

During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, America was transformed by telephones, electricity, rural mail delivery, expanding railroads, and increasingly sophisticated farm machinery. At the same time, additional farms now owned by the Kampeter, Reichel, Boes, Eisterhold, Baumhoer, Stiefermann, Clark, Schwartz, Uthe, Voss, Hoffman, Luebbert, Schaefer, Graves, Fick, Sundermeyer, Lueckenotto, Schroeder, Pfahl, Lock, Mengwasser, Borgmeyer, Koenigsfeld, and Strope families joined the growing list of Osage County Century Farms.

The twentieth century brought even more dramatic change. The Wright brothers achieved powered flight in 1903, Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, and rural America became increasingly connected by automobiles, electricity, and improved roads. During World War I, American farmers were called upon to increase food production, and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote.

Even as the nation changed rapidly, new Century Farms continued to be established in Osage County. Farms currently owned by the McCuskey, Roche, Otto, Stegeman, Grant, Kliethermes, Glavin, Smith, Mengwasser, Muenks, Berhorst, Vehlewald, Peters, Haslag, Schaefer, Scheulen, Keilholz, Paulsmeyer Farms/Gerloff, Morton, Falter, Berhorst, Thomeczek, Bax, Kremer, Schmitz, Loehner, Bisges, Wulff, McMichael, and other families were established during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

In 1923, the youngest of today’s Century Farms was established. Within a few years, the Roaring Twenties would give way to the Great Depression, followed by another world war and decades of technological advances that reshaped American agriculture.

Yet those farms, like the older ones that preceded them, remain part of the landscape of Osage County today.

Some have expanded. Others have diversified. Modern equipment, GPS guidance, precision agriculture, and conservation practices have replaced horses and hand labor, but the commitment to caring for the land has continued from one generation to the next.

Today, those farms are still producing crops nearly two centuries after the oldest among them was established.

As America marks its semiquincentennial, Osage County’s Century Farms stand as living reminders that while the nation was making history, generations of local families were living it, one season at a time.