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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 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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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…
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The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and Missouri’s Response
The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 occurred just as World War I was winding down. The name, Spanish Influenza, likely derives from the King of Spain’s diagnosis, followed by a sensationalized report of his illness. Unlike many wartime countries, Spain was neutral in the Great War and had no press censorship. The pandemic unfolded in…
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American School of Osteopathic Medicine
Osteopathic medicine emerged in north-central Missouri in the last decade of the 19th century at a time when medicines commonly included addictive opioids and damaging mercury purgatives. Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917) touted a medicine-free healthcare system that idealized the body as a machine capable of curing itself once restored to proper alignment. Still’s operators, as…
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Missouri and the Western Steamboat
No object better reflected early Missouri’s history than the iconic western paddlewheel steamboat. Missouri boasts of access to two of the nation’s major interior rivers — the Missouri and the Mississippi, and, therefore, the steamboat figures prominently in the early history of the state. Oftentimes, Americans romanticize the steamboat age as a time of slow…
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Homer G. Phillips: Transforming Missouri Medicine
In the first half of the twentieth century, segregation and discriminatory practices kept Missouri’s Black residents from accessing equitable medical education and healthcare. After years of lobbying for adequate hospitals, in 1937, St. Louis welcomed a state-of-the-art medical center to serve the Black community. The construction of Homer G. Phillips Hospital represented a transformational moment…