Maitland Map
Maitland is a city in Holt County, Missouri, United States. The population was 342 at the 2000 census which at one point billed itself as the "Bluegrass Mecca" -- home to the largest bluegrass farm in the world.
The town is named for John Skirving Maitland who was a surveyor for the Nodaway Valley Railroad (the construction company for the Kansas City, St. Joseph and Council Bluffs Railroad) that arrived in Maitland in 1880 when its superintendent John Fisk Barnard bought the land for the town from John S. and Delila Swope. The railroad would eventually be taken over by the Burlington Northern Railroad before eventually being abandoned.
The town is a farming community. One of the neighbor farmers was David Ward King, inventor and promoter of the King road drag -- an invention that essentially was two logs lashed together and dragged behind horse or mule teams that was an effective and inexpensive method to grade dirt roads. It was the horse drawn forerunner of the modern road grader. The invention came at the time Henry Ford started to mass produce automobiles. Before its invention, wet country roads became muck and were often nearly impassable. The use of the King Road Drag kept rural roads solid, even when wet, which made them passable all the time. These improved rural roads made possible both the advent of the automobile and rural mail delivery.
Nearby cities include Graham, Fillmore, Barnard, Maryville, Bolckow.