Nodaway County, Missouri: History
The county has a rich agricultural history. It is the home of trainers Ben Jones and Jimmy Jones, whose horses won six Kentucky Derby races and two Triple Crowns.
The county is home to Northwest Missouri State University. The university's grounds were a re-creation of the landscape of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. In 1993, Northwest was designated by the Missouri State Legislature as the official Missouri Arboretum. ESPN has carried the university's participation in five national championship football games, three of which they won.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas studied to become a priest at Conception Seminary College, before giving it up for law. The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration convent in neighboring Clyde has 550 relics of saints, the largest collection in the nation.
Located in Tornado Alley, many tornadoes have struck the county, including an F4 tornado on March 29, 1979, which obliterated the town of Braddyville, Iowa across the county line. Tornadoes have damaged two of the county's largest buildings, the Administration Building on the campus of Northwest Missouri State University and Conception Abbey. The 1881 Hopkins tornado is one of the first recorded F5 tornadoes.
Early life in the county was chronicled by writer Homer Croy, a Nodaway County native, in many books, articles, films and Broadway shows in the 1920s and 1930s.
The origin of the name "Nodaway" has been attributed to a Pottawatomie name for "placid," a Dakota Sioux name for "crossed without canoe," and various tribes names for "snake."