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The St. Louis Arch
In November 1933, when Luther Ely Smith returned to St. Louis from visiting the George Rogers Clark Memorial, which he helped build in Vincennes, Indiana, he appraised his adopted city’s riverfront. From near this site, William Clark and the Corps of Discovery co-leader Merriweather Lewis embarked in 1804 on their overland expedition to the Pacific…
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The Two Federal Reserve Banks of Missouri
Stars and stripes, eagle and laurels—patriotism, federalism, strength, and peace; each of these symbols and values represented on the seal of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Missouri, spoke to the mission of the system as a whole. The first central banking institution allowed to open in the United States since Andrew Jackson’s disastrous…
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Missouri Trolleys and Streetcars
When employees of the St. Louis Transit Company voted to strike on May 8, 1900, the effect was to severely crush the city’s primary public transportation system for several months. Similarly, in December 1918, 2,800 employees of the Kansas City Railways, in demand for higher wages, walked off the job and temporarily shut down the…
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The Heart of Kansas City, Missouri
Union Station currently sits as the centerpiece of the Kansas City skyline. Thousands of visitors from across the metropolitan area and country admire its architectural beauty and world-class exhibits every day. However, four short decades ago in the 1980s, the future of the once-thriving railway station stood unclear. Plagued with the decrease in railway travel,…
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Washington University in St. Louis
St. Louisans founded Washington University for the city. As the needs of the community of St. Louis have changed, the university has grown with those changes. The university was established in 1853 by local businessman and politician Wayman Crow. Washington University owed its early development to educator and minister William Greenleaf Eliot. The university’s mission…
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French Missouri: French Settlement and Community in the Colonial Era
In Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham’s Fur Trappers Descending the Missouri, a white French fur trader and his biracial son stare back at the viewer as they travel down the Missouri River. Although he was born after the United States government acquired the Louisiana Territory, Bingham knew that Americans were not the first people of…
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The Forgotten Trail: Missouri’s Old Wire Road
Have you ever wondered why roads end up where they are? The obvious answer is somebody wanted to go from where they were to a new place. Familiar roads, such as the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails, are part of the popular history of the United States. Another road, an integral part of westward expansion…
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The Spirit of St. Louis: Charles Lindbergh and the Birth of the St. Louis Air Industry
Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974) is an extremely complicated person in American history. The virtues, flaws, and downright contradictions of his life and character are the subject of endless debate. What is not disputed is the influence that Lindbergh had on aviation. In an era when air travel, air mail, and even air forces were still…
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The Start of the Santa Fe Trade
Missouri neared statehood at a moment of serious financial struggle. Amid the depression that followed the Napoleonic Wars, important banks in Missouri were failing, and Missourians became suspicious of these institutions and the currency they issued. The legislature offered paper money to officials and merchants, which banks had loaned on the government’s credit, but the…
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A Portal into the Past: Prominent Newspapers of Missouri
In 1808, Meriwether Lewis, the former explorer and recently appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory, believed a newspaper could encourage public discourse throughout the region. Lewis called upon Joseph Charles, an Irish-born printer from Kentucky, to begin working in St. Louis. In 1808, Charles founded the Missouri Gazette and set up shop at First and…