Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Corning Corning, MO

Corning is a former village and virtual ghost town in Holt County in northwestern Missouri — the 2020 census counted just 3 residents, and the community is estimated to be uninhabited as of 2025.

Corning was laid out in the fall of 1868 on the railroad main line between Kansas City, Missouri and Council Bluffs, Iowa, a line that remains active today, and its plat was filed in 1879.

The village was named for Erastus Corning, who owned sizeable shares of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad; Corning, Iowa shares the same railroad namesake.

A post office called Corning operated from 1868 to 1964, then continued as the Corning Rural Station until 1995.

From 1882 to 1980, a Burlington spur line ran southeast from Corning to Clarinda, Iowa, initially under the name Tarkio Valley Railroad.

Local accounts say Corning once had about 350 people in the late 1800s, but its population slid to 88 in 1990, 21 in 2000, 15 people in 8 households in 2010, and just 3 in 2020.

Corning's St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

Corning was hit by the 2019 Midwestern United States floods, which devastated much of the Missouri River bottomland in Holt County.

After more than 150 years as a community, the village of Corning voted out of existence and formally disincorporated in February 2023.

The former village covered just 0.11 square miles, all land.