Cheerokee Campsite-Trail of Tears

CHEROKEE CAMPSITE, Laughlin Park, Spring Road: Long before Waynesville was platted, Joseph Roubidoux Ill, a French fur trapper and trader from New Orleans, built a camp cabin near this spring that is now named for him. Many years later in 1837 and again in 1839, detachments of Cherokee who were forcibly marched from their homelands of Georgia to what is now Oklahoma camped at the spring and on the land that comprises Laughlin Park. This removal became known as the Trail of Tears. This site is one of only seven certified National Trail of Tears sites in Missouri.