Shannon County, Missouri
Shannon County is a county in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 7,031. Its county seat is Eminence. The county was officially organized on January 29, 1841, and was named in honor of George F. "Peg-Leg" Shannon, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It is the second-largest county by area in Missouri.
Missouri's first copper mine was opened near Eminence by Joseph Slater in 1837; other mines followed, though activity slowed once larger deposits in Michigan opened in 1846. Iron was also mined in the county for a time, and during World War II Missouri's only manganese mine operated at nearby Thorny Mountain. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, large lumber companies harvested the county's forests by the thousands of acres, and the towns of West Eminence, Winona, and Birch Tree grew up as logging camps before a reforestation program began restoring the timber.
As of the 2000 census, Shannon County ranked 78th on the list of counties with the lowest per capita income and 46th on the list of counties with the lowest median household incomes in the United States, making it the poorest county in Missouri.