Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Pilot Knob, MO

Pilot Knob is a city in northeastern Iron County, Missouri, in the Arcadia Valley of the St. Francois Mountains, with a population of 671 at the 2020 census.

Pilot Knob was platted in 1858 and named after the Pilot Knob mountain nearby, whose distinctive shape and prominent position made it a navigational landmark, or "pilot," for travelers.

Pilot Knob mountain reaches an elevation of 1,470 feet, rising 581 feet above the Arcadia Valley floor, and holds a large deposit of iron ore in its upper regions that was heavily mined in the 19th century.

The completion of the Iron Mountain Railroad all the way to Pilot Knob in 1857 provided easy transportation for iron ore mined from Pilot Knob to the growing city of St. Louis.

Before the town existed, a village of the Delaware Tribe stood at the base of Pilot Knob until about 1819, and the Cherokee passed through the valley during the Trail of Tears in the late 1830s.

During the Civil War the Union built Fort Davidson, an earthwork fortification between Pilot Knob and Shepherd Mountain, to guard the approaches to the valley and the railroad terminus.

On September 27, 1864, in the Battle of Pilot Knob (also called the Battle of Fort Davidson), about 1,456 Union defenders held the fort through a day of assaults by 5,700 to 8,700 Confederates under General Sterling Price; the heavy Confederate casualties discouraged Price from continuing on to attack St. Louis.

The Battle of Pilot Knob State Historic Site preserves the remains of Fort Davidson along with a museum dedicated to the battle; the state of Missouri purchased the grounds in 1968, and the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.

The 90-acre summit of Pilot Knob mountain is now the Pilot Knob National Wildlife Refuge, home to nearly one-third of the world's population of endangered Indiana bats; the refuge is closed to the public to protect the bats.

At the 2010 census, Pilot Knob had 746 people living in 335 households, spread across a city of about 0.9 square miles along Missouri Highway 21.