24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Pattonsburg, MO

Pattonsburg is a city in northwest Daviess County, Missouri, famous for relocating its entire townsite after the Great Flood of 1993 — the present town sits about four miles north of the original site, now called Old Pattonsburg, on higher ground.

Pattonsburg was inundated at least thirty times in the century before 1993, and after two floods struck in 1993 residents voted to accept federal money and move the whole town out of the floodplain.

The abandoned Old Pattonsburg was used in 1998 as a filming location for Ang Lee's Civil War film 'Ride with the Devil,' standing in for Lawrence, Kansas.

The town's history involves two moves: an earlier settlement was abandoned in the 1870s when the railroad bypassed it, and the new town — platted under the name Elm Flat for the elm trees growing there — was incorporated on August 7, 1877.

Pattonsburg's population was 314 at the 2020 census, far below its peak of 1,068 residents in 1920.

The 2010 census counted 348 people living in just 99 households in Pattonsburg, giving the relocated town an unusually high average household size.

Pattonsburg is served by the Pattonsburg R-II School District, and the Pattonsburg Historical Museum preserves artifacts from the original town site.

The city covers about 0.61 square miles in the Grand River country of northwestern Missouri, and its 1909 flood was the most disastrous in Daviess County history to that point.