 The town site was originally platted in 1845 by Randall Allen; it received its name when in 1854 Edwin Alfred Hickman purchased 40 acres in Washington Township to build a steam-powered grist and saw mill along Hart Grove Creek.He had moved down from Independence when wood became scarce for his mill there and he sought to take advantage of the large amount of traffic on the nearby Santa Fe Trail at that time.Its current given name is due to a clerical error in the second half of the 19th century; when the community around Hickman's Mill applied for a federal post office, the officer in Washington, D.C., mangled the name to "Hickman Mills".