Bonne-Terre Farming and Cattle Co. - Unissued Cattle Stock Certificate

St. Francois County, MO, 19--, Unissued Stock. Bonne Terre is a city in St. Francois County, Missouri, United States with a population of 6,864 at the 2010 census. Situated in the Southeast Missouri Lead District, lead mining shaped the history and character of the area from the earliest French settlers in the 1720s until today, even though Bonne Terre Mine established by St. Joseph lead mining company in 1864 closed in 1962. Mine tailing piles eroded, and contaminated the area as dust, posing residential hazards or were washed into the Big River. Only in 1992, the Bonne Terre Mine Tailings Site was listed as a Superfund site; as of 2022 remediation is still ongoing.

In 1880, Bone Terre was platted as a town. The miners were local small farmers, timber cutters and rock quarrymen supplementing their income, and later Hungarian and other Slavic and southern European immigrants. In 1890, the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railroad hauled ore to Herculaneum smelters. The Bonne Terre Depot from 1909 still exists. At the beginning of the 20th century, St. Joe Lead was the only one of initially dozens of mining companies left, as it had bought up the remaining companies. In 1962, the mine closed. Lead mine tailings were used as paving gravel for decades. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonne_Terre,_Missouri