The King's Road

Shortly after New Madrid was established as a fortified settlement by Col. George Morgan in the spring of 1789, the Spanish government in St. Louis authorized construction of a military road from St. Louis to New Madrid to protect trade and commerce on the Mississippi River and link their northern capital with the settlement below the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. According to historian Louis Houck, the route followed an old Indian trail, skirted bogs and low ground, forded streams at shallow points, and after descending from Crowley's Ridge ran nearly straight into New Madrid. At first it was only a bridle path, but as population and settlements increased it became more defined, and in 1794 it was extended south from New Madrid to present-day Caruthersville, then called Little Prairie. Because travel upriver from St. Louis was difficult, heavily loaded wagons increasingly used the road, prompting improvements, and the Spanish required travelers to obtain permits from post commandants in New Madrid, Cape Girardeau, Ste. Genevieve, or St. Louis or else travel by river between posts. Spanish control ended with the transfer of the District of Louisiana to the United States in 1803, after which the route had no official status for four years, lost its frontier military importance, was declared a public road in 1807 by Governor Meriwether Lewis and the Louisiana Territorial judges, became a postal route in 1812, and in 1814 was authorized by the legislature as a road from St. Louis to New Madrid that followed much of the original route while later bridges and reroutings shortened some sections. Over time parts of the route were known as the Illinois Road, Telegraph Road during the Civil War, and Hatcher Street in the 1870s, before being incorporated into Missouri Highway 9 in 1922 and present-day U.S. Highway 61 in 1926; in 1928 a bypass west of New Madrid replaced the original in-town alignment, and in the 1950s local efforts renamed the route Kingshighway to recall its importance as Missouri's first road, El Camino Real. Between 1915 and 1917, the Missouri Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed nine red granite markers along the route from St. Louis to Caruthersville and sought a state-funded survey of the original road, but although the measure passed the House it died in the Senate. In New Madrid, a monument dedicated on April 11, 1916, was later relocated several times but always remained along the original route.

New Madrid, Missouri · United States