Relive Yesteryear

The Lost History Museum preserves and displays local artifacts from Valles Mines, one of Missouri's oldest settlements. Tours by appointment. Please call ahead as our hours vary.

Walk down mainstreet of this ghost town and visit the general store, payroll office, smelter, furnace tender's cabin, or other historic sites.

The museum itself is housed in the 1749 settlement house of Francois Vallee. Inside is an extensive collection of photos, miniatures, and primitives from this once booming mining town.

Learn more about the area's history and its people including the shootout between Confederate highwayman Sam Hildebrandt and Federal troops.

The Lost History Museum at Valles Mines
Exhibits you can walk into
Tours by appointment. Please call ahead as our hours vary.
 
VALLES' MINES CULTURE AND HISTORY EXHIBITS
  • Exhibit: Local photos, ledgers, artifacts and documents from the 1800's forward. Many local residents or their descendants have donated their family portraits and work pictures of times past. Valles Mines has former residents and their families all over the world.
  • Exhibit: Mining artifacts. Hand mining with star drills, eventually steam tools and always brute force. "The men were bulls!"
  • Exhibit: Diamond drill cores. In 1911, the steam powered Diamond Core Drill struck an underground river making the Artesian Well at the foot of the hill where it still flows today. Bring your own jug. Click here to View test results from June 2000.
  • Exhibit: 'Mineral Blossoms' (drusy quartz) gathered from Mines on the property.
  • Exhibit: The General Store. Before the Tornado sucked up the original building, Confederate Sam Hildebrand and his men shot it out with Federal troops during the Civil War.
  • Exhibit: The Paymaster's Shack, a small building with a big history. Someone blew the safe and legend has it that Jesse James did it. Sure, except his hideout cave which is not legend lies a few miles due East.

"So, in 1780 great great great great great great Uncle Ferdinand was taken by Indians...but someday we will find your long lost cousins..."
What happened is our mission ...

Here in the History Museum of the old village of Valles Mines, things happen a little differently. One day we left the front door open while sweeping. We had just hung our first historic picture on the wall. A former village resident stopped in and, seeing the picture, mentioned they had a picture of the building that used to stand next door. In the year that followed, this scene repeated itself over and over.

So we had to move next door into the old white (shown above) building to house all the photos and memorabilia people have been so kind to give us. Turns out that while repairing the cedar siding we found the old building was actually an old log cabin underneath.

Day by day now, slowly we are reconstructing the town and times of Valles Mines and Southeast Missouri, in many cases with actual physical evidence. Little did we suspect that former residents would range all over the world. Or that they would someday return to bring us their stories...
Our Mission Statement

1) To preserve physical evidence of previous civilizations and technologies,

2) To recreate those eras' events leading to demise and prosperity, and

3) To restore enough context so that an era's evidence and events fall into a meaningful perspective and so that we appreciate the value of Foresight or a greater understanding of our own Humanity.

For centuries people have come into contact with Valles' Mines, lived there, mined there, passed through, died there, or descended from those who did. They number well into the thousands. Scattered all over the world now, the Lost History Museum has made it its Mission to find out where everyone went.

Valle did more than carry lead back to Ste. Genevieve over the French Village Road. He started a subculture of civilization that survives even today. If you know someone interested, bring them to town and come by the Museum. We welcome your company!

 Military Museum
Photo Exhibit: Mina Harrison's collection of Signal Corps pictures of the Holocaust and her own snapshots taken while liberating Buchenwald and Dachau with "Patton's Army".
     
  • Sound Recording Exhibit (soon to be podcast): General Wm. H. Harrison reccounts his service as Gen. George Patton's youngest general staff officer, European Theatre of Operations as the 3rd U.S. Army defeated Hitler.
  
 
Photo exhibit: Military parade photos of the 102nd Ozark Division, later 102nd USARCOM, now disbanded. Contributions from former members of the 102nd and their families is appreciated, including Jeeps, half-tracks, and tanks. We have the room.
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Our Geologic Origins

Over one million years before mankind even walked on the earth, a staggering geologic upheaval broke the Earth in huge pieces and brought lead formations that should have lain forever deep in the ground up to the surface.

You can still see the Valles' Mines Fault on the east side of Highway 67 going south from Hwy. V where the rock turns from red to blue vertically. While faults occur everywhere, this one is different. This is a textbook example of a 'reverse thrust' fault - it's backwards, it should never have happened, a deep layer ended up on top! - But even stranger, what came to the top? Some of the most geologically perfect minerals on the planet. Galena nuggets the size of Volkswagons made up of ore 99% pure. The impurity -- silver! Get some at our Rock Shop.

 
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COMING SOON: