Bollinger County, Missouri

Bollinger County is a county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the county's population was 12,363. The county seat is Marble Hill. The county was officially organized in 1851.

Bollinger County is part of the Cape Girardeau, MO-IL Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is the home of the Missouri dinosaur and Blue Pond, the deepest natural pond in Missouri, is located in the southern portion of the county.

History

Sixty million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the area that would eventually become known as Bollinger County. The "Missouri Dinosaur," a hadrosaur (duck-billed), was discovered at a dig near Glen Allen. It has produced bones from different dinosaurs and aquatic species.

The county was named after George Frederick Bollinger, who persuaded 20 other families to leave North Carolina in the fall of 1799 and settle in a region immediately west of what is now Cape Girardeau, Missouri. To acquire the land, Bollinger first had to sign off a document asserting that he and his fellow settlers were all Roman Catholics. In reality, most of the group were members of the German Reformed Church and none were actually Catholic. However, Don Louis Lorimier, the Spanish Land Commandant of Cape Girardeau, had been impressed by Bollinger on an earlier visit and decided to bend the rules for him and his fellow settlers.