There were several "Evening Shade" communities in Missouri in its early days. If you are referring to the Evening Shade in Roubidoux Township of the northwest corner of Texas County, I have doubts it even existed during the Civil War. The little hamlet didn't even have a post office until 1901. According to Ramsay's MO Geographical Names the community was named by a J. C. Davis perhaps for a hollow by that name nearby. Also, according to Ramsay the hamlet of Evening Shade is mentioned in the poem "The Doomed Race." It does not appear in the 1876 Campbell's Atlas of Missouri, which usually lists all the wide places in the road. I see in the latest official Missouri road map that Evening Shade no longer appears on the map.

I know of one shooting that took place in Evening Shade in 1976. The community is just off the southern end of the Fort Leonard Wood Military Reservation, I believe in the Mark Twain National Forest. My neighbor, a Military Police captain chased a taxi driver who was a hit and run suspect all the way through all of FLW until the cabbie finally realized he couldn't escape and pulled over just outside the reservation in little Evening Shade. The captain was so worked up during the pursuit that he rushed out of his car with .45 automatic drawn to confront the cabbie who was sitting on his seat with his feet on the ground with the door open. Evidently, the cabbie was acquiescent and not offering resistance but made no answer when the captain ran up and either on purpose or by accident the captain's .45 went off, the slug passed through the front door of the cab and hit the suspect in the lung. The man barely survived and was in the hospital a long time. I failed to hear what happened to the man or the captain thereafter.

Bruce Nichols