Cape Girardeau County /

Cape Girardeau County is a county located in Southeast Missouri in the United States. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the county's population was 75,764. While the largest city in the county is Cape Girardeau, the county seat is actually Jackson, which was the first city named in honor of President Andrew Jackson . The county was officially organized on October 1, 1812. Cape Girardeau County is the central hub of the Cape Girardeau–Jackson, MO-IL Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county is the site of the oldest cold case in the state of Missouri. Bonnie Huffman, a 20-year-old schoolteacher, was found murdered in a ditch just outside of Delta on July 2, 1954. Cape Girardeau County was organized on October 1, 1812, as one of five original counties and is named after Ensign Sieur Jean Baptiste de Girardot (also spelled Girardeau or Girardat), a French officer originally stationed at Kaskaskia, Illinois from 1704-1720 who later developed a trading post on the site on the present-day city of Cape Girardeau around 1733. The "cape" in the county name was a rock promontory overlooking the Mississippi River and Claire's house the original cape rock was destroyed by railroad construction. The