Missouri has always been one of the world’s great producers of lead. For more than 200 years one particular mine in our state produced the valuable mineral, and mining of lead continues not far away today. The French economy was beginning to sag in the late 1600s and early 1700s. So it became necessary to look for other sources of wealth in the new world. In 1715 the governor of Louisana, Antoine de La Motte Cadillac, crossed into what later would be Missouri from Kaskaskia, a place later known as Illinois. He was looking for silver which had been reported in Missouri.