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in this area in 1818-1819.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ozarks Civil War {{!}} Counties |url=https://ozarkscivilwar.org/regions/phelps |access-date=2023-05-29 |language=en-US}}</ref>
One year later, Lieutenant James Abert started the first railroad reconnaissance survey in Rolla. Abert was later to become the first professor of Civil Engineering at the Missouri School of Mines. The founder of Rolla, Edmund Ward Bishop, was originally a railroad construction contractor in [[New York (state)|New York]]. He came to this part of the country in 1853, tasked with building the “Frisco Branch of the Southwest Railroad.”<ref>{{Cite web |title=Abert Expedition {{!}} The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture |url=https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=AB001 |access-date=2024-04-16 |website=Oklahoma Historical Society {{!}} OHS |language=en-us}}</ref>
Because of an urgent demand, Phelps County was created by legislative action on November 13, 1857, from portions of [[Pulaski County, Missouri|Pulaski]], [[Maries County, Missouri|Maries]] and [[Crawford County, Missouri|Crawford]] counties.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Directory of Towns, Villages, and Hamlets of Missouri |url=https://thelibrary.org/lochist/moser/phelpsco.html |access-date=2023-05-29 |website=thelibrary.org}}</ref> A special commission was appointed to select a county seat, with instructions to locate the site on the mail line of the railroad as near as possible to the county's center. Bishop then offered a tract of some {{convert|50|acre|m2}} for the official town site, and it was accepted. There was disagreement over the site - the "westerners" wanted Rolla, and the "easterners" wanted [[Dillon, Missouri|Dillon]], so the General Assembly did not legally declare Rolla to be the official county seat until 1861. The 600-strong group that favored Dillon signed a protest citing the fact that only two of the three commission members had met to consider the possible sites for the county seat. They contested the decision all the way through the Missouri Supreme Court. Before the high court could make a decision, however, the Legislature took action on January 14, 1860, confirming the location of the county seat at Rolla. Smarting under a considerable amount of criticism concerning the matter, all members of the county court resigned during April 1858, but later withdrew their resignations. It was finally settled in favor of Rolla.
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