La Plata is a city in Macon County, Missouri, United States. The population was 1,257 at the 2020 census. La Plata is located next to the Adair County stock and is upon a mainline of the BNSF Railway. The town is best known for La Plata station, which provides passenger rail help to Chicago and Los Angeles.

The beginnings of La Plata can be traced back up to March 17, 1827 taking into account Drury Davis traditional a trading post near the town’s current location. The ensuing few years maxim Davis joined by relatives and links to Make a small village that included a blacksmith shop, an inn, and stagecoach station.

La Plata was platted in 1855. It was named after the city of La Plata, in Argentina. The broadcast is of Spanish lineage meaning “silver”. Two men, Louis Gex and Thomas Saunders, were the primary force behind the town’s platting, and drew straws to choose the community’s name. Saunders wanted to herald the town Charlottesville to praise a favorite sister, while Gex pushed for the post La Plata. Gex won out and the town is believed to have been first incorporated on September 29, 1856. Another of the before settlers who helped in creating the town was W. W. Moore, who erected La Plata’s first hotel. The North Missouri (later known as the Wabash Railroad) came to town in 1867, and the Santa Fe Railroad twenty years later, passing through La Plata on its route from Chicago to Kansas City. The immersion of the two railroads made La Plata an ideal shipping lessening for timber, livestock, grains, and new goods for northern Macon County and southern portions of adjoining Adair County as well. As portion of this growth, the town was incorporated as a fourth-class city on April 4, 1881 taking into consideration Jacob Gilstrap serving as first mayor. La Plata’s first major industry, a creamery, was acknowledged in 1883. The capacity had the gift to manufacture up to 1.25 tons of butter per day. However, fire destroyed the creamery and it was never rebuilt. Other open agriculture-related industry has existed in the town higher than the years, including a large chicken hatchery and turkey hatchery. Two major oil pipelines pass through La Plata as well, the Prairie Pipeline bodily the first in 1912. A “tank farm” of large storage tanks was located for many years on the city’s northern edge. The Wabash railroad through La Plata was lonesome after it was complex in 1991 next the Norfolk and Western Railway, but the Amtrak station is nevertheless in operation on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail system, and the town is served by the Southwest Chief. A small but active concern community still exists in the town.

The first school, named Long Branch for a nearby creek, was received in 1868. It was replaced, in 1872, by a five-room brick schoolhouse. Today, children of La Plata and the surrounding rural Place are educated by the La Plata R-2 bookish district.