Roby, Missouri

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Roby Fire Station

Roby is an unincorporated community in northwestern Texas County, Missouri, United States. It is located about sixteen miles northwest of Houston and ten miles south of Fort Leonard Wood at the northern junction of Routes 17 and 32. Roby is home to the "Mark Twain National Forest" campgrounds.

Transportation

Waynesville Regional Airport at Forney Field serves the community with air service; even though it is on Fort Leonard Wood, it is jointly run by the cities of Waynesville and St. Robert and is available for civilian use by private pilots and scheduled commercial passenger service.

• Route 17 is the major north-south route which crosses Interstate 44 at exit 153 at Buckhorn, runs east through Waynesville, turns north to Crocker, and then runs north out of the county to Iberia. South of Interstate 44, Highway 17 hugs the western edge of Fort Leonard Wood, passes near Laquey, and circles south of the post until it runs out of the county and eventually joins Highway 32 in Roby.

• Highway 32 runs west from Route 17 through Plato and continues west through Lynchburg and on to Lebanon, MO.

Media

The Fort Leonard Wood area has one daily and three weekly print newspapers, as well as an online internet daily newspaper. The area also has two internet discussion sites, the Pulaski County Web and Pulaski County Insider. South of the post, the Houston Herald [1] covers Texas County issues but does not regularly cover Plato village or school issues.

KFBD-FM and its AM sister station, KJPW, are the dominant news radio providers in the Pulaski County area, which includes Fort Leonard Wood as well as northern Texas County. These stations compete with the only other station broadcasting from Pulaski County, KFLW Radio, owned by the Lebanon Daily Record [2].

The Daily Guide, commonly known as the Waynesville Daily Guide [3] but based in St. Robert and serving all of Pulaski County, is owned by Gatehouse Media [4] and is the central printing plant for three other Gatehouse newspapers in nearby counties, the daily Camden Lake Sun Leader [5] and Rolla Daily News [6] as well as the weekly St. James Leader-Journal.[7] The Daily Guide covers school sports and the occasional big story in Plato.

The content of the weekly Fort Leonard Wood Guidon [8] is produced under the auspices of Army Public Affairs at Fort Leonard Wood but printed under contract by the Springfield News-Leader,[9] a Gannett-owned [10] newspaper which produces and sells advertisements in the Fort Leonard Wood Guidon. The military contract to produce the Guidon was held by the Lebanon Daily Record until the end of 2002, and before the Lebanon Daily Record had been held by the Waynesville Daily Guide for many years.

The Pulaski County Daily News [11] internet newspaper is privately owned by a Waynesville resident, with coverage including Plato and northern Texas County.

The Pulaski County Insider [12] is run and maintained by a businessman from St. Robert and hosted by a Potosi resident.

The Pulaski County Web [13] is run and maintained by a Devil's Elbow resident.

School Districts

The areas south of Fort Leonard Wood, including the unincorporated Pulaski County communities of Big Piney and Palace, are served by the Plato R-V School District,[14] which is based in the northern Texas County village of Plato but also includes parts of Pulaski, Laclede and Wright counties.

Nearby school include districts in Success, Manes and Gasconade, K-8 districts which don't have a high school. Some students from those districts attend Plato High School after finishing school in their own district.

Fort Leonard Wood is in Pulaski County and a high percentage of military personnel live off post in surrounding communities, especially St. Robert and Waynesville but also the farther-out cities of Richland, Crocker, and Dixon, and the unincorporated communities of Laquey, Swedeborg and Devil's Elbow, all of which have a lower housing cost than nearer housing in St. Robert and Waynesville. Military personnel assigned to training areas on the south end of the post sometimes choose to live in the unincorporated areas of Big Piney and Palace in Pulaski County, or the northern Texas County communities of Plato and Roby.

Seven main school districts are fully or partly within the borders of Pulaski County, not counting two small districts which are mostly within other counties and only have only a few dozen residents within Pulaski County. All seven school districts have a high percentage of Fort Leonard Wood military dependents, and over two-thirds of Waynesville students fall into that category.

Fire Protection

The Roby Fire Department Inc. was established in 1988 and continues to serve the community. The Roby Fire Department operates 3 stations housing 8 firefighting apparatus. The fire department provides fire protection/suppression, fire prevention education, motor vehicle extrication and fire based medical first response within a 155 square mile area that includes the communities of Roby, Evening Shade, Success, and portions of Bucyrus and the extreme Southern portion of Pulaski County, South of Fort Leonard Wood. The fire department is dues/donation based to meet financial obligations and is an all volunteer organization. Its current ISO classification is 9.

External links

• Texas County, Missouri - Official site.
• Success R-VI School District - Official site
• Plato R-V School District - Official site.
• Roby Fire Department - Official Fire Department Facebook Page