An 18th-century stone fort discovered in St. Charles and rebuilt in Defiance could be one of the biggest historical finds in Missouri in the last 50 years, experts say, but until recently, almost no one knew it existed.

"Does it make a lot of noise, and is it flashy?" asks C.W. Stewart, director of the Daniel Boone Home and Boonesfield Village in Defiance. "No, but it's a real find. How many 1793 buildings are we going to find that weren't known?"

For more than 200 years, the fort sat on property off what is now Muegge Road, where Fischer & Frichtel is building Spring Mill, a development of luxury homes that start at about $500,000.