Map of Maitland city, Missouri

Maitland is a city in Holt County, Missouri, United States. The population was 276 at the 2020 census. At one point the city billed itself as the “Bluegrass Mecca”—home to the largest bluegrass farm in the world.

Maitland city overview:
Name:	Maitland city
LSAD Code:	25
LSAD Description:	city (suffix)
State:	Missouri
County:	Holt County
Elevation:	942 ft (287 m)
Total Area:	0.31 sq mi (0.81 km²)
Land Area:	0.31 sq mi (0.81 km²)
Water Area:	0.00 sq mi (0.00 km²)
Total Population:	276
Population Density:	884.62/sq mi (341.07/km²)
ZIP code:	64466
Area code:	660
FIPS code:	2945596
GNISfeature ID:	2395819

Online Interactive Map

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Maitland online map. Source: Basemap layers from Google Map, Open Street Map (OSM), Arcgisonline, Wmflabs. Boundary Data from Database of Global Administrative Areas.

Maitland location map. Where is Maitland city?

Maitland location on the U.S. Map. Where is Maitland city. — Maitland location on the U.S. Map.

Maitland location on the Missouri map. Where is Maitland city. — Location of Maitland in Missouri.

History

Maitland was platted in 1880. The town is named after 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, purchased 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.

Maitland is a farming community. One of the farmers from Maitland 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 rendered them passable all the time. These improved rural roads made possible both the advent of the automobile and rural mail delivery.

In the first half of the 20th century, Maitland claimed to have the largest bluegrass seed producing farm in the world. John Q. Weller was to claim that the 10,000,000 pounds (4,500,000 kg) of seed produced on his farm was more than the harvested seed output of the entire state of Kentucky. In some years, Weller would get permission to pile up bumper crops of seed on the city streets. During the harvest time in late June/early July, the town hosted a Bluegrass festival.

Bluegrass seed production in the late 1950s/early 1960s moved to farming communities in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The Festival had been discontinued.

In 1975 the Maitland Community Betterment Association celebrated the bluegrass stripping heritage with the slogan, “Home of the Strippers.”