Old Mines, Missouri

Old Mines (French: La Vieille Mine) is the name of an unincorporated community and surrounding area in southeast Missouri that were settled by French colonists in the early 18th century when the area was part of the Illinois Country of New France. The early settlers came to mine for lead, and their descendants still inhabit the area where, through a combination of geographic and cultural isolation, they maintained a distinctive French culture well into the 20th century. As recently as the late 1980s there may have been a thousand native speakers of the region's Missouri French dialect. This culturally distinct population has sometimes been referred to as "paw-paw French" and lives in an amorphous area in Washington, Jefferson, and St. Francois counties roughly 15 miles (24 km) either side of a line from Potosi to De Soto. The village of Old Mines itself is in northeastern Washington County six miles north of Potosi.

Early history

The southeast Missouri lead district is the location of the earth's greatest known concentration of galena, an ore of lead. Found first in surface deposits over a wide area, and now mined deep underground, the ore was known to the native Indians of the region from whom it became known to early French explorers. Father Jaques Gravier noted in his journal in October 1700, the presence of rich lead ore twelve or thirteen leagues from the mouth of the "River Miaramigoua" (Meramec), that is 36 to 39 miles (58 to 63 km). At that time the Meramec tributary Big River was considered part of the Meramec and often called the Little Meramec (French Petit Merrimac). The distance cited on the Meramec proper would not be in an especially mineralized region, but if taken to mean the Big River, it would lead to its headwaters and possibly refer to areas on the Mineral Fork or Old Mines Creek where some of the earliest mining took place.