In underwriting the competition to design the memorial, Smith challenged contestants to develop something “transcending in spiritual and aesthetic values,” which would symbolize American history and culture.² The Gateway Arch is the fulfillment of Smith’s dream. Although he never lived to see the actual monument built, Smith approved of Finnish-American Eero Saarinen’s winning design in 1947.³ Smith wrote to Saarinen and stated, “it was your design, your marvelous conception, your brilliant forecast into the future, that has made the realization of the dream possible – a dream that you and the wonderful genius at your command and the able assistance of your associates are going to achieve far beyond the remotest possibility that we had dared visualize in the beginning.”⁴

Architectural engineer Hannskarl Bandel’s unique construction design brought Saarinen’s design to life. Bandel’s developed a series of steel triangles that narrowed in size as they near the top. Each section was twelve feet in length and doubled-walled. Once installed, each unit was filled with concrete and covered with stainless steel sheets.⁵ The Arch is composed of 142 sections of these prefabricated stainless steel-covered triangles. The Arch weighs over 17,246 tons and is over 630 feet high and 630 feet wide at the base.

From its inception in 1933 until its completion in 1967, the Arch project was controversial. The 40 city blocks along the Mississippi riverfront envisioned as the location of the future memorial was densely populated and held hundreds of historic buildings. Smith’s commission planned to raze the buildings using the city’s power of eminent domain to acquire the property rather than purchase it directly from the owners.⁶ The resistance to the project and the lawsuits ensuing from the commission’s plans and approach to the land acquisition delayed the start of construction and approval of matching federal funds needed for site preparation. Legal suits to prevent the issuance of city bonds to fund the project paralleled the landowner suits against government acquisition and impeded progress. Then, the 1933 financial crash compounded the delay. Still, by 1942 with all property owner suits and appeals resolved, and questions over the issuance of bonds by the city settled, crews finished clearing the 90-acre site.⁷ Although America’s entry into World War II, combined with new lawsuits over the relocation of utilities and the elevated railroad track lines, again postponed construction of the Arch, work on the restoration of the Old Court House and the Memorial Park proceeded. Construction of the Arch finally began in 1961 with the laying of the foundation.

The final cost of the Arch was $13 million, financed with 75 percent federal funds and 25 percent city of St. Louis funds. Additionally, the Bi-State Development Agency funded the $2 million Arch transportation system.⁸ The total cost of the entire project including acquisition and demolition of buildings on the site, site preparation, restoration of the Old Court House, construction and landscaping of the surrounding park, the parking facility, underground museum and exhibits, visitor accommodations, building of the new train tunnel and moving of the railroad track, exceeded $40 million; again this was funded approximately 75 percent by the federal government and 25 percent by the city of St. Louis.⁹

In addition to political and financial delays, protests and labor disputes plagued the Arch’s construction. Civil rights activists saw the Arch project as a symbol of a perpetuation of racial discrimination in the building trades in a highly unionized city. Although African Americans worked as day laborers, none held positions in the skilled building trades hired to construct the monument. Black workers took action and protested the construction company in mid-1964. Then, on July 14, 1964, Percy Green and Richard Daly, two members of the Congress of Racial Equality, climbed the north leg of the Arch and remained there for four hours to protest the exclusion of Black contractors and laborers from the project. A group of protestors gathered in support and stayed while the demonstration lasted. Racism was also at the root of a demonstration on January 7, 1966, when members of the AFL–CIO walked off the job, refusing to work with plumbers affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIU). The protesters claimed that the Black plumbers the CIU represented did substandard work. Given that the federal government funded a significant portion of the construction of the Memorial Park, the protests initiated a series of events that led to intervention of the U.S. Justice Department. The Justice Department filed a suit against the St. Louis AFL-CIO and four of its member unions. The cases were the first filed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which governed equal employment.

The Arch’s visitor center and museum opened in 1967. In that same year, the tram to the top of the Arch, opened to the public. The National Park Service assumed responsibility for management of the entire complex, which became known as Gateway National Park.¹⁰ The Park Service designed the museum, located under the Arch, to provide historical information about Thomas Jefferson, the American colonizers who played a role in expanding the West, and the First Nations peoples who populated the land that white Americans confiscated. The goal was to help visitors understand the complex intersection of diverse wants, needs, dreams, methods of attainment, and rationalization of consequences that drove western expansion. The Old Courthouse of St. Louis, notable because of its association with the Dred Scott case, is also located in the park and open to the public.¹¹

While most visitors to the Park are attracted by the beauty of the edifice and the history it memorializes, the Arch has also attracted daredevils since its completion. In addition to parachutists flying through the legs of the monument, there have been multiple attempts to climb or parachute off the Arch. The first and most deadly incident occurred in November 1980 when 33-year-old Kenneth Swyers attempted to parachute from a plane to the top of the Arch and then base jump using his reserve parachute. Unfortunately, the wind blew Swyers sideways after landing, and he slid down the leg to his death.¹² A month later, a local St. Louis television station reported that a parachutist wearing a Santa Claus costume jumped out of an airplane and landed on the Arch. The supposed stuntman reportedly grasped a beacon on the monument and then used the parachute to support his glide down the Arch’s leg. Police later determined that the report was, most likely, a hoax.¹³ In 1986, professional stuntman Dan Koko, who earned $1 million when he successfully dove 110 meters off the Vegas World Hotel in 1984, proposed free-diving off the Arch into a giant airbag, seeing this as the ultimate stunt. St. Louis officials nixed Koko’s plans.¹⁴ Then on September 14, 1992, John C. Vincent, who parachuted off the World Trade Center in May 1991, performed a successful climb of the Arch. The 25-year-old used suction cups to ascend the leg and then parachuted safely back to the ground after resting on top for over an hour. Vincent was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors.¹⁵

Rather than risk parachuting onto the structure, visitors can reach the viewing room at the top of the Arch in trams that travel inside the legs of the monument. Once there, visitors can see east across the Mississippi into East St. Louis, Illinois, and west into downtown St. Louis, Missouri, and the sprawling suburbs of the greater St. Louis region. With exception to the Mississippi River, little remains of what Lewis and Clark saw as they set out to chart America’s western territory in 1804. The Arch stands as a complicated representation to the nation. For some, the arch stands as a glorious testament to western expansion and progress; to others, the Arch represents the physical embodiment of displacement and racism. Which begs the question, how can progress be an equitable endeavor for all involved?

Strikes of public transport workers were not uncommon and impacted the entire community’s economy when they occurred. In urban areas in Missouri such as Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, Joplin, and St. Joseph, residents depended on an extensive network of trolley and streetcar lines to navigate cities that were too large to walk. In the cities and towns of late nineteenth century Middle America, the rough and muddy condition of the city streets, either unpaved or paved with cobblestones, made walking problematic. Initial transport systems were horse-drawn omnibuses. Although often bumpy, riding horse drawn cars spared the passengers exposure to the muck of city streets with the additional benefit of navigating up steep hills, such as the bluffs at the river’s edge in Kansas City. However, the horses’ speed and stamina limited the effectiveness of horse-drawn omnibuses and railed horsecars to an approximate four-mile radius from a city’s center.⁵ Additionally, horses created an average of 10½ pounds of manure per day, creating a clean-up and disposal challenge for the neighborhoods.⁶

A transportation solution was needed that would grow with the quickly expanding metropolises. Although trains connecting major commercial cities finally reached major Missouri cities in the 1850s and 1860s, they were noisy and dirty and altogether unsuitable for use in crowded cities. An intra-city solution was needed that would provide a more city-amenable and less expensive method of transportation in these confined spaces. Entrepreneurs in St Louis saw an opportunity to upgrade to horse-drawn rail cars (known as horsecars), following the example of profitable Eastern companies. Looking for cheaper solutions in 1868, they experimented with steam-powered vehicles and later electric rail cars to meet St. Louis’ growing demand for public transportation. At one point, investors even built a cable-car system. Still, the fast growth of the city and the problems of operating a cable system drove investors to transition to the new and more economical electric trolleys and streetcars.⁷ In 1874, the completion of the Eads Bridge across the Mississippi River finally connected East St. Louis, Illinois, with St. Louis, Missouri; shortly after that, new trolley lines opened between the two cities. For the first forty years, several dozen privately owned lines operated in the area. As operating parallel systems became less profitable, most of these companies consolidated into the St. Louis Public Service Company. The company operated under a franchise agreement with the cities it served until taken over by the Bi-State Authority (later Metro) in 1963. Despite the rail companies’ financial struggles, businesses grew up along the intra-city rails, and new residential communities flourished.

Intra-city electric trolleys and streetcars addressed the negative attributes of locomotives producing much less pollution and were considerably quieter. The cars, powered by overhead electrical wires, were smaller and lighter than train cars and, therefore, less expensive to manufacture and maintain. The rails on which trolleys ran were embedded in the street and even with the surface, which enabled smooth transit for pedestrians and other vehicles as well as drainage for rainwater.⁸ Installation of rails for horse-drawn and electric cars also was faster, less expensive, and easier to maintain than those needed for steam locomotives, facilitating the quick expansion of the electric trolley system as cities expanded.

Similar to advancements in St. Louis, the Citizens Railway Company in St. Joseph, Missouri, replaced its horse-drawn omnibuses with horse cars shortly after the Civil War in 1866. By 1880, six different companies were operating horsecars in the city. In 1880, Peoples Street Railway advertised the first electric streetcar, although historical records indicated that it may not have gone into operation until 1887.⁹ In 1885, another company, St. Joseph Railway Light and Power Company, operated 150 electric streetcars over 40 miles of track. This was significantly more miles than either St. Louis or New York City had in operation at the time. Between 1910 and 1939, the company also operated a three-mile interurban electric railway between St. Joseph and Savannah, Missouri.

Missouri’s most extensive trolley system was a tri-state network connecting southwestern Missouri, eastern Oklahoma, and southeast Kansas mining towns. The hub of the trolley system was in Joplin, Missouri. Lines extended as far north as Croweburg, Kansas, south to Miami, Oklahoma, and east to Carthage, Missouri. By 1920 this network provided easy access to nearly every town in the region, bolstering the mining industry by providing affordable transportation for mineworkers from their homes to the mines and back.¹⁰

But the honor of being the largest trolley system in Missouri – and the third largest in the country at its peak — belongs to Kansas City, Missouri, which also began with horse-drawn railway cars in 1870.¹¹ In 1885, the city added a cable car system similar to the one operated in San Francisco. The cable design allowed cars to navigate up and down the steep bluffs from Union Depot in the West Bottom at the juncture of the Missouri and Kansas rivers to Woodland Avenue on the city’s east end. When electric power replaced horse-drawn cars, Kansas City’s rail system expanded even faster, providing transportation to Liberty, Lawrence, Olathe, Fort Leavenworth, Excelsior Springs, and other local communities. By 1920, the network covered hundreds of miles of streets, providing pollution-free, inexpensive transportation to all classes of area residents.¹² Ridership in 1922 reached an all-time high of 136.8 million riders, dropped to 70 million just before Pearl Harbor, but later soared back to 136 million immediately after World War II.

Kansas City also was relatively progressive in that it did not attempt to segregate the trolleys or streetcars. In fact, citizens voted down a proposed ordinance to institute Jim Crow segregation on streetcars and trolleys.¹³ This was not the case in St. Louis, where Black people were initially required to ride hanging onto the outside of the cars. In 1868, in response to a lawsuit filed by Neptune and Carolina Williams, the St. Louis Circuit Court ruled that companies must allow Black passengers to ride inside the cars.¹⁴ When, despite the court order, the practice continued, Charlton Tandy organized a boycott in 1870 to force the companies to allow Black passengers to ride safely inside the cars.¹⁵

Missouri communities such as Springfield did not have as many official Jim Crow laws on the books compared to those in southern states; however, many of the public facilities including streetcars were segregated by white supremacist custom. The previously mentioned Springfield labor strike regarding streetcars intensified racial relations in the city. During the strike, citizens who supported the workers road jitneys, but Black residents were frequently not allowed to ride the jitneys by local segregation custom.¹⁶ Peter Small, a Black Springfield resident, reported being physically threatened after riding a jitney. He complained, “They won’t let Negroes ride on the jitneys even if I want to ride.”¹⁷ While there is evidence of racial segregation on streetcars in some Missouri cities, the construction of the cars and the method of loading from the front and unloading from the rear of the cars made strict adherence to segregation impractical.

Although the customs regarding segregation on public transportation was less hardline in Missouri, the expansion of streetcar lines still facilitated segregation because they allowed white families to move at greater distances from the city centers and impoverished neighborhoods. Real estate investors and proponents of segregated housing patterns, such as Kansas City’s J.C. Nichols, built their new suburbs close to or near the end of the trolley or streetcar lines. Availability of transportation from the new housing developments to the downtown business districts contributed to the fast expansion of Missouri’s urban areas. For example, Nichols saw the electric streetcars as so critical to the success of his master plan for the development of the Country Club District south of downtown Kansas City that when the Dodson Dummy Line threatened the success of his venture, he purchased the railway. He then turned the company over to the Metropolitan Street Railway Company to operate in exchange for its commitment to electrify the railway.¹⁸ The streetcar ran along a right-of-way now known as the Harry Wiggins Trolley Track Trail. In 1957, the Country Club Line to Brookside was the last electrified streetcar line in Kansas City to be decommissioned when ridership dropped below 46 million annually.¹⁹

With post-World War II Detroit churning out automobiles and the Eisenhower administration funding a new interstate highway system, trolley ridership declined sharply at same time the population of Missouri’s metropolitan areas grew. For example, in Kansas City ridership dropped from 130 million in 1947 to 121 million in 1948, 106 million in 1949, and 92 million in 1950.²⁰ In this same period, the population within the city limits of Kansas City grew from 399K in 1940 to 456K in 1950. Most cities expanded and changed faster than the fixed-route street railways could adapt. As passengers deserted public transportation for their automobiles, investors in public transportation abandoned streetcars for buses, looking for ways to reduce costs and reach riders in suburbs where streetcar tracks did not exist. Not only were buses less expensive to purchase and maintain, but companies also avoided the expense of maintaining the streets and bridges that previously they shared with the city. On June 23, 1957, Kansas City converted the last trolley line to bus service. The public streetcar lines in St. Louis ceased operation in May 1966.

Before many years passed, public interest in electric public transportation, now referred to as “light rail,” was revived, primarily driven by a desire to reduce pollution and road congestion. Thirty years after the last electric streetcar ceased operation in St. Louis, a new “MetroLink” light rail began service. It connects St. Louis Lambert International Airport to downtown St. Louis, Scott Air Force Base, Washington University, and Forest Park with 38 stations along two routes. It is currently the 11^th largest light-rail system in the country.

Kansas City, Missouri, too, responded to the desire for light rail by installing two miles of track from the River Market to Kansas City’s Union Station. Over 9.4 million riders have enjoyed the service since it launched in 2016. A 3.5-mile expansion from Union Station to the Country Club Plaza and the University of Missouri-Kansas City is scheduled to open in 2023. A third three-fourth mile route, planned for operation in 2025, will connect River Market to Berkley Park on the Missouri riverfront. Ridership along the entire route is free to the public. Financial analysts credit the streetcar with contributing one-quarter of the $1.8 billion in new investment along the streetcar route between 2013 and 2018. Proponents of the expansion of the light rail system believe the city will enjoy similar financial growth as other lines open to the public.²¹ Debates remain about for whom the streetcar is meant to serve, however, as it runs from the heavily financed River Market to the wealthy neighborhood of Brookside. With revitalization of city services such as the streetcar, we must always ask the question, “for whom are these services meant to serve?”

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Kansas City began to emerge as an important railroad hub. This was largely due to the completion of the construction of the Hannibal Bridge, the first railroad bridge across the Missouri River, in August of 1869. Urban Historian Charles Glaab observed that this first bridge, “has served as the city’s special symbol…the key to its success and a tribute to the bold resourcefulness of a small group of inspired city fathers.”¹ Boosters of Kansas City in the tension-filled decade prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, as well as in the chaotic postwar period, pushed for railroad construction as a means of building their community.² As a result of the completion of the Hannibal Bridge, Union Station’s predecessor, Union Depot, opened in Kansas City’s West Bottoms district in 1878. Over 180 trains passed through the depot daily. Union Depot’s location, however, quickly became a problem. While its site in the West Bottoms facilitated the transportation of cattle and other goods, the area was prone to flooding and the station was surrounded by “less desirable” landmarks such as gambling saloons and brothels.

The various issues with the West Bottoms location led city officials to decide to build a new train station in a new location. The station found its new home when twelve conjoining railroad companies committed to the project.³ The valley at 25th Street and Grand Avenue was chosen for the station due to its central location and high floodplain. Construction began in 1911, spearheaded by designer Jarvis Hunt, a trailblazer of the City Beautiful Movement.⁴ The building was designed in Beaux-Arts style with large arches throughout the grand hall to brightly illuminate the area. Other features included marble floors and ornate decoration. Construction took three years and heavily relied on the work of immigrants. Many Irish immigrants spent countless hours laying down railroad tracks and excavating the needed land. Without the help of immigrant labor, the station would not have been completed so swiftly.

Union Station opened on October 30, 1914. The 850,000 square footage building included nice floors of offices, a grand hall, ticketing stations, shops, and restaurants, including the Harvey House. The main headquarters for the Harvey House chain, which was founded by Leavenworth resident Fred Harvey and included restaurants and hotels along rail lines throughout the western United States, was located in Union Station.⁵ The building featured 95 foot high ceilings engraved with ornate moldings and showcased three chandeliers that weigh over 3,500 pounds. Three large arches defined the grand hall, with a grand central clock hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the station.  The clock was a prominent meeting point for both Kansas Citians and visitors. These spectacular architectural details are still on display today. The station boomed with the sounds of thousands of passengers and guests, peaking during World War I with 79,368 trains passing through the station. For instance, in one day, 271 trains journeyed through the station. Soon, it became the heart of railway transportation for the entire Midwest. During this time period, Union Station in Kansas City was the second busiest train station in the entire country, only after New York City.

Unfortunately, excitement for the popular station and its attractive architecture was quickly met with tragedy. On June 17, 1933, the station became the site of what became known as the Union Station Massacre. Two FBI agents and the chief of police from MacAlester, Oklahoma apprehended Frank Nash, an infamous bank robber with links to organized crime who had escaped from the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, two and a half years earlier.  They transported him by train from Fort Smith, Arkansas to Kansas City, where they planned to turn him over to Reed E. Vetterli, the special agent in charge of the Kansas City FBI office.⁶ Kansas City policemen were present to reinforce them as they moved through the station and made the transfer. As the law officers loaded Nash into a waiting Chevrolet parked in front of the station, gangsters fired shots toward them in an attempt to free Nash. The suspected shooters included Charles “Pretty Boy Floyd” Arthur, Vernon Miller, and Adam Richetti.  Their attempt to free Nash failed when they killed him along with four law enforcement officers in the shootout. Gaining national attention, the incident led Congress to grant more protective power to the FBI.⁷ This resulted in the agency being permitted to carry protective firearms and make arrests.

Union Station became an important site during WWII. The station began to grow throughout this time as it was vital in Kansas City’s mobilization for war, just as it had during World War I. In 1945, passenger traffic hit a record 678,363 passengers as thousands of soldiers were traveling home from war.

The evolution of transportation in the postwar years shifted the role of Union Station. As air travel, the interstate highway system, and Americans’ love of owning cars became more prevalent and popular, railway travel began to decline. Similar to other train stations across the country, Kansas City’s Union Station lost its appeal and need. By 1973, only six trains operated, transporting about 32,842 passengers daily.⁸ With less foot traffic, retail shops and restaurants such as Fred Harvey Company, the Westport Room, and the Lobster Pot closed. In 1985, Amtrak ceased its services out of Union Station, ushering a period of decline and deterioration for the building.

In an effort to save the station, Kansas City officials partnered with Trizec, a Canadian firm, to redevelop the structure and the surrounding freight house area that was also facing decline. This proved to be unsuccessful, as Trizec made no meaningful improvements to Union Station. As the abandoned building continued to deteriorate, many advocated for its demolition. Union Station, a site that once represented the pride of Kansas City, became an “eyesore” in the city’s skyline.

Kansas Citians, however, did not give up on saving this once-thriving building. In order to save and redevelop Union Station, Kansas City approved a first of its kind, a “bi-state” tax which included five Missouri and Kansas counties in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This initiative raised funds for a $250 million renovation completed on November 10, 1999. The newly unveiled Union Station included shops, restaurants, theaters, exhibits, and Science City, which is a children’s science museum.⁹ Union Station has since hosted world-class exhibits, civic organization offices, live televised programs, and community events. The restoration of the building also attracted the railway company Amtrak to return and operate their routes through the station.

The history of Union Station provides a glimpse into Kansas City’s story as well as reflects national trends: a booming transportation hub, a city facing postwar urban decline, and recent revitalization efforts in cities across the United States. Union Station is beloved by Kansas Citians residents and has become a nationally recognized historic landmark and one of the defining sites of Kansas City. Today, Union Station still functions as one of the most utilized train stations in Missouri. Whether dropping off a loved one on their train departure to seeing a thrilling exhibit, everyone who steps into Union Station has a story of their time there, as did the millions before them.

Beginning in 1682, France laid claim to the area of central North America which included the vast Mississippi River drainage basin. French colonists moved to the region near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers in the latter half of the seventeenth century. French fur traders, trappers, farmers, and Jesuit missionaries came from France, French Canada, and New Orleans to Upper Louisiana (la Haute-Louisiane) or what was often called Illinois Country, an area which consisted of the present-day states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana.² Initially settling on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the first half of the eighteen century, the French slowly began to expand their settlement to the west bank of the Mississippi River as the population grew.³

The growth of French settlements in Upper Louisiana was largely made possible by the expansion of the fur trade. French colonists’ success in the fur trade was tied to their unique relationships with the Indigenous peoples of the area, which allowed fur traders to expand their trade networks far into the American interior. Once dismissed by American historian Fredrick Jackson Turner as insignificant to American westward expansion, more recently scholars have recognized French fur traders and trappers as integral to non-Indigenous settlement in Middle America.⁴ The French established trading posts such as St. Louis, Kawsmouth, and St. Joseph in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which grew into thriving urban areas in later years.

In addition to the fur trade, French colonists established farms, aided in the spread of the Catholic religion, and worked to extract valuable natural resources such as lead. French settlement was initially concentrated on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in communities such as Kaskaskia, Fort de Chartres, and Prairie du Rocher, in what is now the state of Illinois. During the early years of settlement, residents chose to live near military forts or trading depots for protection and their agricultural lands fanned out in long strips from these centralized settlements. French settlers raised livestock and grew grain products both for subsistence and sale to growing markets in Lower Louisiana. French settlements in Upper Louisiana were vital to the survival of the French Louisiana territory as a whole as it depended on agriculture to feed its growing population. The French also increased their involvement in the fur trade with Indigenous nations and searched for mineral resources to exploit. French settlers eventually expanded their operation west of the Mississippi River into what is now the state of Missouri. Founded in the 1730s, Ste. Genevieve was an example of such a settlement, becoming the first permanent French community west of the Mississippi River.⁵ Ste. Genevieve’s growth is attributed to settlers’ desire to move closer to the agricultural fields they established west of the river and to the lead mines they had established near current-day Potosi, Missouri.⁶

The French colonists in Upper Louisiana — and the enslaved people whose labor they exploited — made significant economic contributions to France’s colonial empire through agricultural production, lead extraction, and access to the lucrative fur trade business. Yet, France did not value Louisiana, particularly its northern reaches, as much as its sugar colonies in the West Indies. During the Seven Years War, France covertly offered French Louisiana, including the port of New Orleans, to Spain in payment for their military aid in the war against Great Britain.  The Treaty of Paris in 1763 resulted in the French ceding their territory east of the Mississippi River to the British in acknowledgement of their defeat. Spanish rule went into effect the following year west of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Many French settlers vacated their lands in Illinois Country in what was now the British controlled territory east of the Mississippi for Spanish lands west of the river. French settlers thought their prospects would be better under Spanish control due to their shared Catholic faith and a belief they would better protect their rights and claims to the land.  French settlers’ reasoning proved sound. Although the Spanish colonial government officially ruled Louisiana for the next 40 years, there was never a large migration of Spanish settlers to the colony. The Spanish administrative structure was light handed and French colonists and cultural practices continued to dominate the colony.

During the colonial era, French settlements were home to a diverse population of both new and long-established residents — French, French Canadian, Indigenous, and African, who engaged in farming, trapping, and mining.⁷ The French sought to create a cohesive community among these diverse peoples through such mechanisms as a shared language, the practice of Catholicism, and the fur trade. During the eighteenth century, Indigenous Americans were the dominant group in Illinois Country. In response to their minority population, French settlers purposely cultivated business and governing alliances through trade relations and intermarriage with Indigenous peoples in the region. These often-reciprocal business and family connections promoted the expansion of French economic and political interests. One such example was the Chouteau family whose reciprocal relationship with the Osage allowed them to dominate the fur trade in the region and establish St. Louis as the primary trading outpost for the venture.⁸

French settlements were structured by a social hierarchy; at the top were Catholic missionaries, military officers, and wealthy traders. Conversely, enslaved people of African or Indigenous descent occupied the bottom tier of the social hierarchy. Soldiers, boatmen, hunters, trappers, and farmers occupied the middle ground between the two groups at either end of the social spectrum.⁹ A person’s place within the social structure was not always dictated by wealth, however. For example, in Ste. Genevieve, while the wealthy still sat at the top of the social structure, less affluent French families that persisted for long periods and were considered respectable.¹⁰

Enslaved Indigenous and African peoples played a prominent role in the social and economic structures of Upper Louisiana. Jesuit missionaries were the largest enslavers of African peoples in Illinois Country in the early eighteenth century,¹¹ but by the latter half of the eighteenth century, the trader elites owned the majority of enslaved people, both Indigenous and African.¹² Even though the governor of Spanish Louisiana, Alejandro O’Reilly, officially outlawed Native American slavery in 1769, the edict was never enforced and the colonists continued to enslave various groups of First Nation people into the early nineteenth century.¹³ The importation of enslaved Africans increased dramatically over the eighteenth century as both the French and Spanish colonial regimes encouraged the use of enslaved people to increase agricultural and mining production in the region.¹⁴

However, under both French and Spanish law, enslaved people were theoretically given some legal protections. Under the revised French Code Noir of 1724, while still defining enslaved people as property, the enslaved were also viewed as human beings that deserved certain rights. The code specified that enslavers needed to adequately provide for enslaved people’s religious, food, and clothing needs, while also outlawing torture and family separation. These requirements were difficult to enforce; therefore, compliance was usually left up to the conscience of individual enslavers. Although the law was not always followed in colonial Louisiana, according to the revision of the Code Noir by the Spanish in 1777, white people were not permitted to intermarry or engage in sexual relationships with enslaved men and women. As was the case in slavery systems, white enslavers frequently sexually exploited enslaved people, although there were a few interracial relationships that were long lasting and occasionally resulted in the freedom of enslaved individuals. Laws regarding manumission were more generous under the Code Noir. Some enslaved people were able to buy their own freedom, and, on some occasions, enslavers granted people their freedom. Emancipation was at the discretion of individual enslavers, however, as there were no fixed rules for the process. Overall, while the various “protections” for enslaved people were written into the law, there was no guarantee of enforcement of those protections.¹⁵

The law and custom allowed white women to enjoyed certain rights and some agency in determining their own lives in Upper Louisiana. In the eighteenth century, white men outnumbered white women by a significant degree in Ste. Genevieve and other French communities. French colonial women often married men over ten years their senior, resulting in significant age gaps between the parties. Because of this age disparity, women were more likely to be widowed and to remarry. Over time, some women accrued property and influence. Prenuptial contracts protected French women’s financial interests when they married.  Women often brought property into their marriages due to a douaire (dowery) or inheritance. Indeed, it was customary for French children to inherit their parents’ estates equally regardless of gender. Women could use these claims to financial assets as a means by which to protect property from their husbands’ debts and insolvency. At their husbands’ deaths, widows received the dower portion stipulated in the marriage contract as well as half of the couples’ joint property with the remainder divided among their children. Women without children were entitled to the entire estate. Widows frequently carried this property into subsequent marriages. Through these financial protections, French colonial women were able to maintain and manage their own property, which resulted in their ability to wield influence in their communities.¹⁶

French colonial women also demonstrated some agency within their marriages. French colonial men rarely worked in a single profession, instead they diversified their economic activities to guarantee their continued success in an ever-changing region. Their husbands were frequently absent from their families and households, no matter their economic situation. Wealthy men traveled for trade, diplomacy, and simply a desire to travel, while less wealthy men worked as soldiers, hunters, and boatmen. In their place, French wives acted as deputy husbands, given the power to act to protect business and family interests.¹⁷

The scarcity of white women in the colony encouraged white men to form sexual attachments with Black and Indigenous women. While many of these relationships were not consensual and were instead the result of an imbalanced power dynamics and even violence, there were some cases in which white men and Black or Indigenous women engaged in what might be described as common law marriages. Both parties understood the social and economic benefits of these partnerships. It was common for French men to forge economic and diplomatic relations with Indigenous people through marriages to Indigenous women. They also appreciated women’s domestic labor and fur processing skills. Some French men lived openly with their wives and children in French settlements, while other resided with their families upriver in the hunting grounds.  It also was not usual for French men to have both French and Indigenous wives and families.¹⁸

While most women of African descent during the colonial period, were impoverished and enslaved, in St. Louis there were cases of free Black women who owned property. In comparison to the British, the French and the Spanish had a more fluid understanding of race and were more tolerant of interracial relationships, especially in communities with uneven gender ratios. In some cases, French men even manumitted enslaved women with whom they shared long term relationships. A few Black women gained financial assets when their white partners put property in their names to legally protect it from the men’s creditors. Later, the women laid claim to the property when the relationships ended through voluntary separation or death. Eager to strengthen its presence in Upper Louisiana, the Spanish government was willing to grant land to petitioners, no matter their sex or race, also allowed some free Black women to acquire property. These exceptional women were part of a growing free Black community in St. Louis.¹⁹

Although the French lived in the region for over a century, these diverse colonial communities remained sparsely populated. In fact, there had been such limited migration to the region that the Spanish leaders of the colony started to recruit American settlers, including Daniel Boone and his family, to move to Upper Louisiana with promises of generous land grants, no taxes, and protections for slavery. After assuming power in 1800, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte worked to restore France’s claims in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and North America.  He was able to successfully negotiate with the Spanish in secret for the return of Louisiana through the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1802. Yet, French troops were unsuccessful in their attempts to regain control of Saint-Domingue from the free Black and formerly enslaved revolutionaries who had fought to liberate the colony from French rule beginning with an uprising in 1791. Napoleon ultimately decided to cut his losses and agreed to sell all of Louisiana to the United States for $15 million. The U.S. was initially interested in only purchasing the port of New Orleans but recognized the value of acquiring claims to the vast territory offered them. Through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States laid claim to the territory that soon after became the state of Missouri. In the following years, many of Missouri’s flourishing urban areas, such as St. Louis, Kansas City, and St. Joseph, were built on the foundations of the remarkable early French communities. The state’s French roots remain visible to this day though place names and historic artifacts left by these early Missouri settlers.²⁰

One such traveler, future governor Meredith Miles Marmaduke, detailed his 1824 expedition along the trail in journal entries, which the Missouri Intelligencer reprinted. The caravan was the largest yet to follow this route and comprised 81 people, which consisted  of white traders and enslaved people, more than 150 mules and horses, and nearly two dozen wagons.² After camping in Franklin, Missouri to prepare for the journey West, the caravan traveled to Blue Springs along the Missionary Road, a path likely forged in 1821 by missionaries sent in an attempt to convert to the Osage peoples. From there the group traveled into largely unmapped territories of the West. Among the challenges faced during their two-month long trip were the roaming buffalo who repeatedly frightened away the caravan’s horses, and a desperate paucity of water, which led to the deaths of other livestock.

The party arrived in Santa Fe with about $30,000 in trade goods, which likely included brightly colored clothing and fabrics, jewelry, sewing pins, and hand mirrors.³ William Becknell observed that New Mexican consumers preferred merchandise of considerable quality. However, Marmaduke worried that due to systemic conditions, many customers of Mexican descent in the region suffered from poverty. Therefore, Marmaduke was concerned that this could prevent traders from moving their goods at a profit.⁴ However, such ventures, nonetheless proved so lucrative that some American agents tried to warn away potential rivals back home lest an excess of sellers harm their own prospects. The silver coin that merchants brought back to Missouri helped to stabilize the fluctuations of a frontier economy in which specie often ran short. In addition, Missouri farmers were eager customers of the mules purchased in New Mexico. These reliable and versatile draft animals, which were a cross between a female horse and a male donkey, became an important Santa Fe Trade trade commodity.⁵

The trade’s growing profitability caught the eye of a famous Missourian, U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who saw that Missouri’s strategic location made it a valuable gateway to the West. Anyone who wished to journey the Santa Fe Trail had to start in Missouri. Aided by Missouri trader Augustus Storrs, Senator Benton was a key component in sponsoring legislation to mark a road to Santa Fe. Storrs previously traveled the route in 1823. Benton and Storrs were also assisted by Alphonso Wetmore, a paymaster stationed in Franklin, the small town where the trail originally began.⁶ Once the bill passed through Congress, three commissioners oversaw the surveys of the road: Benjamin H. Reeves, Colonel Pierre Menard, and George C. Sibley.⁷ The men hired Joseph Cromwell Brown, an experienced surveyor who had been responsible for determining several key meridians and state boundaries in the past. In 1825, Brown began work charting out the Santa Fe Trail and produced a map spanning the entire length of the route later that year.⁸

The town of Franklin became an important trade center from 1822 to 1826, a marketplace where traders could buy merchandise at 20 to 30 percent above the prices in Philadelphia and take them to Santa Fe for a profit of 40 to 100 percent. Such bright prospects drew many people to the area near Franklin, but a series of floods through 1826 shifted the course of the Missouri River, which soon washed away the town altogether. Later, the town of Independence in western Missouri replaced Franklin as the starting point of the Santa Fe Trail.⁹ As the Santa Fe trade prospered in the subsequent decades, steamboat traffic increased significantly on the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers; goods brought up from New Mexico via the trail moved eastward to St. Louis and beyond. There were also Mexican traders who traveled the Santa Fe Trail in reverse to buy American goods from sellers in Missouri.¹⁰

However, the prosperity of the Santa Fe Trail did not last. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, years of political instability followed. Albino Perez, the federally appointed governor of New Mexico, became increasingly unpopular after he imposed sharper regulations on trade within the province, including on the Santa Fe Trail. Widespread anger among the people of the area erupted into an uprising known as the 1837 Chimayo Rebellion. The rebellion resulted in the killing of the governor, but collapsed the following January. The Santa Fe trade soon shrank to levels witnessed in decades prior to 1821. The Trail assumed renewed importance with the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, which served as a vital corridor for the Army of the West and later represented an important link between the United States and the southwestern territories acquired in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.¹¹

Several factors contributed to the decline of the Santa Fe Trail in the early 1840s. The Oregon and California trails commanded greater attention and siphoned away some of the people and wealth that poured into the West. The emergence of mines in Colorado and Nevada reduced the demand for Mexican silver, and several Americans–many of them in Missouri–began to breed mules that were superior in functionality. Heightened dangers threatened the fewer numbers of traders who continued to use the Trail.¹² The fear of attacks by Indigenous raiders was a concern by the white traders. Additionally, during the Civil War, there was a legitimate concern by traders of small bands of Confederate guerrillas, as they attacked Independence and other provisioning towns in Missouri for political and economic reasons. Traders moved as many as 50 million pounds of freight along the Trail in 1865, yet by this time, the Trail had become nearly out of use.¹³ Soon, railroads spanned across the trans-Missouri West and took most of the region’s traffic with them. Once the first trains reached New Mexico in 1880, the Santa Fe Trail finally became obsolete.¹⁴

In Missouri, the entire state was on a wartime schedule. Neither wartime fundraising nor the movement of troops across the country slowed down war production. As a result, public health officials had only a few interventions available to them to fight epidemics, and the most effective was quarantine. Unfortunately, quarantine was very difficult to enforce due to the necessity for factories to keep running to supply the war effort. Still, the cities that effectively responded to the pandemic relied on military principles and organization. Missouri had examples of both an effective response in St. Louis, and an ineffective response in Kansas City, with varied solutions statewide.

State Capital-Jefferson City

The first reported flu case in Jefferson City appeared on October 8, 1918. It affected the secretary of the State Council of Defense, Frank Robinson.¹ On October 10, the State Board of Health ordered schools to close, canceled church services, and prohibited gatherings of more than 14 people. Businesses were ordered to follow special cleaning routines; factories monitored the temperatures of workers, and coughing and sneezing were discouraged in public places. The State Prison reported more than 100 cases. They obtained a pneumonia serum from the “Mayo Sanitarium in Rochester, Minnesota, and quickly inoculated all of the convicts.” ² On November 21, the Board of Health stated that “Cities could remove the drastic measures intended to limit the disease’s spread.” ³ Even though businesses and churches reopened, schools remained closed until December 31.⁴ But Jefferson City still experienced cases well into December. According to journalist Bob Piddy, “by the end of January, the city death toll was at least 34, plus 26 prison inmates.” ⁵

Southern Missouri and the Ozarks

In Joplin, the city held a Liberty Loan Parade on October 8, 1918. The Red Cross began mobilizing nurses and calling for volunteers. On October 9, the Joplin City Council and the commissioner of health and sanitation, Dr. R.B. Tyler, closed all churches, schools, and theaters; this included a ban on meetings of more than 25 people.⁶ By October 18, the Red Cross asked the city “to establish an isolation hospital because of 74 new cases referred to nurses in two days.” ⁷ By the end of October, the sick included at least seven doctors, including the commissioner of health and sanitation; but nothing stopped the celebrations for the end of the war on November 11, 1918. As these celebrations did not seem to have any effect on new cases, the City Council and the doctors ended the bans on November 15. Joplin had a ban in place for 39 days, and “from October 1 to November 7, the Globe reported 386 cases of flu and pneumonia, with 68 deaths.” ⁸

Springfield’s mayor, J.J. Gideon, ordered the town closed on October 1. The broad ban closed churches, schools, libraries, pool halls, theaters, and any public place where people gathered. However, the shutdown mandate didn’t affect businesses. About three weeks after the closings, a pastor was arrested for holding church services, but then released without charges when officials learned that violation of the mayor’s proclamation carried no punishment.⁹ The mayor ended the ban on November 2. The final count of “influenza deaths in the autumn of 1918 and winter of early 1919 hover around 260.” ¹⁰

The Ozarks local newspaper The Van Buren Current Local, reporting in the Van Buren and Ellsinore area, published an article about the Spanish Flu on November 7. This article stated, “There are several instances where whole families are sick in bed at one time as ‘ye correspondent’ and wife and two boys were all down at once with the malady, we are in position to know how it goes. Both local doctors here have been on the go both day and night.” ¹¹ By the end of November, the newspaper editor noted only two deaths and that “the influenza situation here is improving somewhat.” ¹²

Another Ozarks town, Midco, financially benefited from the outbreak of World War I. The U.S. government paid more than half the cost of building a chemical plant for Mid-Continent Iron Company. In return, the plant supplied chemicals to the government. Hundreds of workers were needed to operate the plant, mostly single men; as a result, Midco was a booming town as the flu hit the Ozarks. Gene Oakley, a Carter County historian, stated, “The flu hit the town at a time when the houses were crowded, and there were many men in Midco who had no one to care for them. In some cases, whole families were virtually wiped out. People died by the score in the worst tragedy to ever strike the young town.” ¹³ Midco would not survive much past the end of the war, and by 1921, the company was bankrupt.

College Towns

Columbia closed schools and churches on October 6. On the 7, the University suspended all classes and events, apart from the Student Army Training Corps. The city set up five emergency hospitals and asked for community volunteers to serve as nurses. “Any woman who is willing to help is requested to telephone Dr. Noyes’ (Guy Lincoln Noyes, then-dean of the School of Medicine) office and to tell the number of hours she can work,” an October 9 advertisement in the Evening Missourian stated. “Even those who have had no nursing experience can be used. Mrs. Selbert, then-superintendent of the emergency hospital, will teach them what to do and how to do it.” ¹⁴

On October 12, the death of Poe Ewing, a teenager at the Student Army Training Corps, marked the first loss in Columbia.¹⁵ The Columbia Board of Health closed all public schools, forbade any public gatherings, and quarantined 75 homes that same day. Although the prohibition of public gatherings slowed down the rise in influenza cases, Columbia’s ministers and other leading citizens demanded an end to the ban. On November 16, Columbia resumed its social activities despite the protests and warnings from four doctors on the board of health.¹⁶

When cases continued to increase the board of health tried a stricter quarantine on November 27. All public gatherings were banned, and a limit of 6 people in businesses. All schools shut down again and did not fully reopen until December 30. These measures helped the city and Boone County record only 150 deaths. Established at the epidemic’s beginning, the University of Missouri emergency hospitals also had a very low death rate; over 1000 cases, but only 14 deaths.¹⁷

Schools, churches, and theaters also closed in Maryville on October 12. Public gatherings were limited to 20 people. The Fifth District Normal School in Maryville, one of five state teachers’ colleges across the state (now Northwest Missouri State), closed a day before the city and remained closed until November 26. After reopening efforts began, students attended school on Saturdays to make up for time missed. In addition, “Maryville mandated that homes with positive cases display identification cards so delivery drivers were aware of infections and could limit their exposure.” ¹⁸ The student newspaper, The Green and White Courier, had many articles about the Spanish Influenza that recorded the illness and deaths among the students. It also made mention of a physician stationed in the administration building for prevention and care.¹⁹

The State Normal School, now known as Southeast Missouri State University, was located in Cape Girardeau. In a legislative report from 1919, this was noted:

During the prevalence of the epidemic of influenza this fall, the value of a hospital was fully demonstrated in the experience of this school. For the care of the students of the S.A.T.C. [Student Army Training Corps] Unit in the Normal School, the government required that the school should provide a hospital. The Board of Regents rented a building just on the edge of the campus which will accommodate about 25 or 30 patients at one time. With the aid of this building, and good nursing provided largely by the women on the faculty volunteering to nurse the sick students, the school has been able to handle about 200 cases of influenza, without allowing a single case to develop into pneumonia and without the loss of a single life. Captain Miller, the military inspector who was here yesterday, said that the record of the school in the care of its students during the epidemic of influenza is equaled by that of only one other school in the Ninth Military District of the S.A.T.C.²⁰

Kansas City and St. Louis

Kansas City was under the control of Democratic bosses Tom Pendergast and Joe Shannon. Most Kansas Citians know about Pendergast and his work as the leader of a Kansas City political organization known as the “Pendergast machine.” ²¹ According to the State Historical Society of Missouri, “the Pendergast machine controlled local government and the Democratic Party in Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri, during the Progressive Era and Great Depression. He finally lost power after a series of political scandals.” Lesser-known political figure, Joe Shannon, considered himself a Jeffersonian Democrat. Shannon’s faction became known as “The Rabbits,” while Pendergast’s group dubbed themselves “The Goats.” According to Shannon’s biography from the Missouri Valley Special Collections, “clashes between the two factions at the primaries caused Shannon and Pendergast to realize that they were splitting the Democrats at the polls, so they devised the fifty-fifty rule.” ²² This divided all city and county patronage between the two leaders. The compromise ensured that a Democrat would be elected mayor, but in return, Pendergast and Shannon shared the appointment of the patronage jobs. Although the bosses shared the jobs, they often did not cooperate with one another. This contributed to the uncoordinated approach upon which Kansas City suffered.

Mayor James Cowgill, Dr. E.J. Bullock, head of General Hospital and Health Director, W.P. Motley, the President of the Health Board, and Dr. A.J. Gannon, head of contagious diseases, were the main figures trying to cope with the epidemic. The city issued the first ban on gatherings on October 7, but after business complaints, the ban was removed a week later. A stricter ban that prohibited public gatherings, was issued on October 17. Dr. Gannon tried to get cooperation from the streetcars, theaters, and business owners, but was met with little success. Since any orders on closings had to come from the Health Board, Dr. Gannon had very little power to enforce the orders. The second ban would last until November 14, when the mayor removed all restrictions. Still, on November 11, when the War ended, over 100,000 people participated in a citywide celebration. Dr. Gannon only remained the head of contagious diseases until November 27. Gannon was fired in a secret meeting of the Health Board by W.P. Motley. By December 5, Mayor Cowgill telegrams the U.S. Public Health Department stating “Assistance is needed at once from your department to help control the influenza epidemic in Kansas City. May we hope for immediate response?” ²³ A federal doctor arrived on December 11, but left on December 18, without doing much. By December 23 all restrictions were ended.

At the dawn of the epidemic, Dr. Max Starkloff was the City Health Commissioner for St. Louis, and Henry Kiel was the mayor. Mayor Kiel “granted unprecedented authority to Dr. Starkloff to implement closures of public places.” ²⁴ The doctor closed schools, theaters, places of amusement, and limited public gatherings to 20 persons by October 7. The additional closures affected every aspect of daily life. There were not any children on playgrounds, nobody in attendance at lodge meetings, no reading at the library, no pool at pool halls, restricted hours at stores, and Municipal Court and churches closed.²⁵

Dr. Starkloff faced pressure to ease restrictions from business interests, the clergy, and the mayor. Finally, Starkloff ended the restrictions for business hours on October 22. Throughout the rest of October and early November, conversations continued about easing the bans, but on November 9, Dr. Starkloff closed “all non-essential stores, businesses, and factories for four days.” ²⁶ On November 12, the bans were gradually lifted over the next seven days, which included the reopening of public schools. All closures ended in St. Louis on December 28.

In discussions of the “the history of the tragic 1918 influenza epidemic, St. Louis is often held up as a model city. Because of the quick and sustained action by its leaders, St. Louis experienced one of the lowest excess death rates in the nation, just 358 per 100,000 people.” ²⁷ However, responses to the 1918 flu epidemic varied throughout the state. In some cases, the government response was more robust than other locations. And while this resulted in slightly better or worse outcomes, the highly contagious disease resulted in a devastating loss at a time with few treatment options.²⁸ As made evident through the varied responses throughout the state of Missouri with the current Covid-19 pandemic, localized responses matter. In the end, it is difficult to control the transmission of epidemic diseases fully.

Long before Route 66 was conceptualized, transportation changes in the early 20^th century prompted local and national interest in creating a public road network. In 1911, over 16,000 cars were registered in Missouri. That number climbed to 150,000 in 1917, as a growing number of Missourians could afford to purchase automobiles.¹ This new population of car-owners created a demand for a navigable, well-maintained public road system to replace existing unpaved and inadequate roads. Missouri voters approved a $60 million bond issue to improve road conditions in 1920.² A year later, the federal government, which shared an interest in improving roads, introduced the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1921 with the intention to create a cohesive highway network that connected rural and urban communities.³ Together, these state and national efforts paved the way for the creation of Route 66.

Route 66 also grew out of the shared interests of Springfield Attorney John Woodruff and Oklahoma Highway Department Chairman Cyrus Avery. Although only Avery is remembered as the “Father of Route 66,” both men were extremely influential in planning and promoting the motorway; Avery was also prominent in naming Route 66. Woodruff and Avery advocated for Route 66’s diagonal Chicago to Los Angeles route believing it would divert traffic from Kansas City to Missouri’s rural towns.⁴ Their proposed route would pass through the state, crossing St. Louis before heading southwest through Cuba, Rolla, Lebanon, Springfield, Carthage, and Joplin. After years of unsuccessful lobbying, Route 66 was finally approved to travel their route by the Secretary of Agriculture on November 11, 1926.⁵ The following year, Avery pushed for the creation of the US Highway 66 Association to promote and pave the road. Woodruff became the organization’s first president and Avery its vice president.⁶ Although Route 66 would not be entirely paved until 1938, Avery and Woodruff’s efforts paid off in 1931 when the Missouri stretch was completed.⁷

The promotion and improvement of the highway in the late 1920s caught the attention of the trucking industry, in its infancy, quickly recognized Route 66’s promise as a shipping way. Unlike highways in the Northern United States, the diagonal, all-season route traversed flatlands through temperate climates.⁸ It also crossed rural and previously isolated regions, like Southwest Missouri, enabling farmers to ship their grains and produce by truck.⁹ These conditions made Route 66 an ideal choice for transporting freight from the Midwest, and by 1930 the trucking industry rivaled the railroad in terms of shipping.¹⁰ The need for roadside amenities along Route 66 resulted in the proliferation of small businesses along the road, particularly in Missouri.¹¹ The increased demand for roadside services along Route 66 throughout the 1930s continued to feed the growth of Missouri’s small towns and businesses, despite devastating economic and environmental crises. Although trucking declined because of the economic downturn during the Great Depression, Route 66 saw increased traffic from laborers, farmers, and working families desperate to find economic opportunities in California and the West. Many of these travelers were also fleeing the Dust Bowl, a destructive environmental disaster that caused drought and soil erosion across the Great Plains, including parts of western Missouri. By the end of the 1930s, an estimated 400,000 people had traveled west on Route 66.¹² This unprecedented movement westward led to a boom in many of Missouri’s towns and mom-and-pop businesses along Route 66.

Although civilian travel on the road declined during World War II, Route 66 continued to bolster Missouri’s roadside economies as it served as a major military transportation corridor. From 1939 to 1945, the highway provided an avenue for moving materials and personnel from centralized production locations and military bases in the Midwest and West to coastal staging points.¹³ As military families and people seeking employment in western defense plants traveled the highway, new businesses emerged and existing service stations, restaurants, and motor courts reaped the financial benefits of long-term and repeat visitors. Motor courts or “tourists courts” emerged in the 1930s and 40’s as a “classier alternative to dingy cabin camps. Unlike downtown hotels, courts were designed to be automobile friendly. You could park next to your individual room or under a carport.”¹⁴ One collection of roadside businesses just north of the newly constructed Fort Leonard Wood were so successful that they eventually grew into a town called St. Robert.¹⁵

After World War II, Route 66 experienced a “golden age” as Americans gained unprecedented wealth and enjoyed increased leisure time. These conditions led to a rise in the number of families who could afford to purchase a car and take vacations. The preceding decades of travel along Route 66 had created infrastructure in small towns to support travelers. As a result, the road quickly became the popular choice for the “Great American road trip.” The increase in travel sparked another, much larger, boom in Missouri’s businesses along the route. One popular motor court, the Coral Court in St. Louis, was founded in 1941 with twenty-one rooms. The number of rooms grew to 66 by 1946.¹⁶ The increased demand for roadside amenities also drove innovation in the restaurant industry and led to the creation of the first drive-up restaurant. Fittingly located in the birthplace of Route 66, Red’s Giant Hamburg in Springfield drew travelers off the highway for a bite to eat.¹⁷

Taking a road trip on Route 66 involved extra considerations for Black Americans looking to take part in America’s new favorite pastime. Although white Americans found countless travelers’ courts and roadside attractions along Route 66, Black tourists faced the challenges of navigating segregation and sundown towns as they traversed the road west. This was especially true in Southwest Missouri, where several sundown towns¹⁸ and unwelcoming businesses dotted the route.¹⁹ Sundown Towns are historically all-white communities, neighborhoods, or counties that exclude Black and other historically marginalized people “through the use of discriminatory laws, harassment, and threats or use of violence.”²⁰ The name derives from the posted and verbal warnings issued to Black people that they may be allowed to work or travel in a community during the daytime, but were instructed to leave by sundown, or face the prospect of violence.²¹ African American travelers relied on tools such as The Negro Motorist Green-Book and a similar Southwest-Missouri pamphlet to help them locate the few Black-owned and welcoming businesses along Route 66 in the state.²² One Springfield business, Alberta’s, was listed in the Green Book almost every year from 1954 to 1967 and provided travelers a safe place to stay, eat, and shop. Similar businesses included Williams Hotel in Joplin and Austin House in Columbia, among others.²³

Ironically, the success and popularity of Route 66 occurred at the same time as its demise. Dwight Eisenhower had observed the importance of an efficient road system to national defense as a general in World War II. Taking inspiration from Germany’s system of high-speed autobahns, President Eisenhower pushed for a highway system that connected major cities via direct routes. Congress approved the Federal Highway Aid Act in 1956, jump-starting the modern Interstate Highway System. That same year, on August 2, Missouri became the first state to award a contract under the new highway law, and the first interstate construction began in St. Charles, Missouri, on I-70 at Missouri Route 94.²⁴ Nearly 20 years later, Route 66 was almost completely bypassed in Missouri by I-44, and by 1985 the road was officially decommissioned in the state.²⁵ The decline in travel and decommissioning of Route 66 increasingly led to the demise of many roadside towns and businesses. Red’s Giant Hamburg closed in 1984 and the Coral Court ended operations in 1993.²⁶

In the wake of the highway’s decommissioning, the Missouri Route 66 Association was formed in 1990, with an intention to “preserve, promote, and develop old Route 66.”²⁷ At the time, Missourians recognized the importance of preserving the ideas and themes that Americans associated with the route. In popular culture, Route 66 was memorialized in an American Adventure crime drama television series that ran from 1960-1964, called Route 66; it starred Martin Milner and George Maharis. Route 66 had become more than a major route West. The highway was a symbol of freedom to Americans; the freedom to travel, explore, try new things, and seek a better life. As Bobby Troup’s song about the famous highway suggests, “Get your kicks on Route 66. It winds from Chicago to L.A. 2,000 miles all the way.”²⁸ Today, Route 66 lives on as the old “Mother Road” from Missouri to the great west, providing travelers a glimpse back in time to a lost era.