National City was a suburb of East St. Louis, Illinois. Incorporated in 1907, it was a company town for the St. Louis National Stockyards Company. In 1996, the company, which owned all residential property in the town, evicted all of its residents. The following year, because it had no residents, National City was dissolved by court order. Its site was subsequently annexed by nearby Fairmont City, Illinois.

Following the American Civil War, the American economy began to undergo a dramatic change as smaller markets and operations were being replaced by more centralized and efficient ones. This was due in no small part to the advent of the railroads, which by this time crisscrossed much of the country and connected previously isolated producers to one another in a more expedient fashion. This transformation of the nation’s transportation network by railroads had a particularly strong impact on livestock-related industries. It eliminated the need for long cattle drives by connecting the producers of livestock (especially cattle) in the West with the major meat processing companies in the East. It also enabled livestock markets to become transregional, with animals being shipped to large, centralized markets for sale, processing and distribution. The result of this was that over time, smaller, localized markets became obsolete and a relatively small number of terminal livestock markets—markets built near important railroad centers—came to dominate the livestock and meatpacking industries. St. Louis, Missouri was a natural choice as one of these locations.

Situated near the juncture of the Missouri River and Mississippi River, the city of St. Louis had long been an important transportation center. Its access to these river systems coupled with its central location in the country had contributed to its becoming a major industrial center and railroad hub, with all the nation’s major rail lines converging in the city and from there running to all the different regions of the country. As railroads became the primary means by which livestock and processed meat was shipped, St. Louis developed into a major livestock and meatpacking center. This was also due to the fact that most of the U.S. population lived east of the Mississippi River prior to 1900, while most of the animals used to produce the meat it consumed were raised west of it, thus making St. Louis a logical place for the interchange between supply and demand in the meat market. However, the Mississippi River provided a hindrance to this movement of livestock and meat to the East at first, because until 1874, when the Eads Bridge was completed, no bridge linking Missouri to Illinois had been constructed. This meant that livestock from the West had to be unloaded in St. Louis, then ferried across the river to East St. Louis, Illinois, where it would then be stocked until it could be taken by railroad to eastern cities. This inefficiency provided additional costs to producers, both in time lost and money spent on ferry fees. It was these problems that caused a group of eastern financiers to invest in the construction of a large stockyard complex outside the already well-established rail center of East St. Louis.

National City had its beginnings as a business investment by East-Coast venture capitalists in the early 1870s. East St. Louis mayor John Bowman had envisioned a new stockyard operation in East. St. Louis that would rival the famous Union Stock Yards in Chicago and make the stockyards in nearby St. Louis minor by comparison, and he approached a group of wealthy investors about establishing it. Most of these investors were railroad men, and virtually all of them were from the East. The man who led this group of investors was Archibald M. Allerton of the New York law firm Allerton, Dutcher and Moore, who also was one of the owners of New York’s National Drove Yard. Allerton and his fellow investors believed such an operation would be a successful venture, but had several conditions they wanted met before they would invest in East St. Louis: 1) they wanted to build their operation on land not incorporated into any existing city, so as to avoid strict regulations, with a promise that East St. Louis would never attempt annexation of their property, 2) they wanted to build their own infrastructure independently of East St. Louis, and 3) they wanted East St. Louis to provide their property with city services such as fire protection. Mayor Bowman acquiesced to these conditions, and the agreement was made official on July 17, 1872, at the East St. Louis city council meeting. The investors had purchased 656 acres (2.65 km2) of land known as Gallagher Pastures (400 acres of which was procured from Mayor Bowman and W.D. Griswold for $145,000, and 256 acres (1.04 km2) from Virginia Matthews for $50,000) on the northeast edge of East St. Louis upon which to build their new stockyard operation, and construction had begun on May 30, 1871. Ultimately, they would spend $1.5 million to construct the complex. It included 100 acres (0.40 km2) of animal pens and 60 acres (240,000 m2) for sheds, as well as the Allerton House (later known as the National Hotel, at which Theodore Roosevelt once stayed)—one of the finest hotels in the area—and a new Exchange Building. On October 31, 1872, the original 17 stockholders who had invested in the new stockyard operation met in Mayor Bowman’s office and elected the first Board of Directors for the operation, with Archibald Allerton as its first President. The St. Louis National Stockyards Company was incorporated in Illinois four days later on November 4 and officially opened for business on November 19, 1873.