By Jim Suhr and Jim Salter, POSTED: 05/26/2011
...Not far from Joplin, tiny Pierce City and Stockton rebuilt piece by piece after tornadoes reduced much of their prized downtowns to rubble, killing four.
... "Some things came back bigger and better," said Johnson, who has spent all but four of her 48 years in Pierce City, where the population is down just 128 from a decade ago. "It's never going to be the way it was as far as physical attributes, and we lost the historical charm as far as downtown. But we're back." So is Stockton, eight years after the lakeside town was brought to its knees by the tornado that killed three people, nearly destroyed the town square and knocked out one-third of its 120 businesses. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed, and the park was obliterated.
Residents wanted to start rebuilding immediately, Mayor Patty Thompson recalls. But the city council barred new construction for a few months, allowing for cool reflection about how the resurrected town should look.
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