Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Old Appleton Old Appleton, MO

Old Appleton is a village in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, whose first settlement was made in 1824 by John McClain and John Schatz on the south bank of Apple Creek.

The community was originally known as Apple Creek, after the stream it sits on, and by the 1870s it had become known simply as Appleton.

In 1918 the word 'Old' was added to the name to eliminate confusion with Appleton City in St. Clair County, Missouri.

Before white settlement, the Apple Creek valley was home to Shawnee and Delaware Indians, some 1,200 Shawnee and 600 Delaware who were brought to the area in 1784 by French Canadian interpreter Pierre Louis Lorimier under Spanish land grants.

The old El Camino Real, the King's Highway connecting New Madrid and St. Louis, crossed Apple Creek at or near the future site of Old Appleton.

German immigrant Casper Ludwig built a brewery in Appleton in 1856 that produced a popular beer called Kulenbacher, and the town once supported a distillery, creamery, hotel, bank, and soda water plant.

A flood on Apple Creek in 1982 destroyed the McClain Mill and washed away the village's original bridge; the historic bridge was restored in 2006 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

The Old Appleton Bridge, built in 1879, is promoted locally as the oldest iron truss bridge still standing at its original location in Missouri.

Old Appleton's population was 73 at the 2020 census, down from 85 people in 27 households in 2010, within a village area of just 0.12 square miles.