About the Missouri River Valley Steam Engine Association
The MRVSEA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and education about the farm community and all that it encompasses. Our annual steam engine show helps us further our mission by allowing our members and exhibitors to display and demonstrate skills and machines used in farm life.
Demonstrations include threshing and rock crushing with steam, straw baling with a stationary baler, lumber sawing, molasses making, hit and miss engines, historical life skills such as churning butter and yarn spinning and sewing, living historians discuss all time periods of life, as well as demonstrations by horse teams and tractors. You can even walk through an early 20th century farm house complete with furniture, quilts and a lunch waiting for the farmer and hands to come out of the field.
The Beginning
In 1963, a group of 34 central Missourians gathered to form the Missouri River Valley Steam Engine Association. On September 5, 1963, they put on their first Steam Engine Show in Boonville, MO, at the Cooper County Youth Fairgrounds. The association called the fairgrounds home up until the mid-1990s when they started looking for a permanent home for the association.
Arnold Brady was a local farmer with a tract of land East of Boonville on Highway 179. His family had farmed the land in Cooper County since purchasing the farm in 1917. He did not want to see his land divided up. So, he made a deal with the association. He would sell the land to them so long as it was used for the education of farming and farm life. And in 1997 the purchase was complete. The first Steam Engine Show was held at the newly dubbed “Brady Showgrounds” in September of 1999.