Katy Trail State Park became one of the United States' most successful rail-to-trail conversion projects over its first 20 years and, as the nation's longest developed rail-trail, was inducted into the national Rail-Trail Hall of Fame. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, known as the Katy, began in the 1870s and by the 1890s ran through much of the Missouri River valley, providing a vital link between central Missouri agriculture and the developing American Southwest while helping existing towns and spurring new ones such as Mokane and Tebbetts. After severe flooding in 1986 washed out several miles of track, and with repair costs high, rail use declining, and the company in financial trouble, operations ceased on October 4, 1986, when trains 101 and 102 made the last run from Sedalia to Machens. Under the National Trails System Act Amendments of 1983, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources obtained interim trail use of the corridor in April 1987 and developed the trail in stages, opening sections from Rocheport to McBaine and from Augusta to north of Defiance in 1990, extending development from St. Charles to past Sedalia by 1996, and opening the Sedalia-to-Clinton section in 1999 after a Union Pacific Railroad donation. The park's creation and growth depended heavily on Ted and Pat Jones, whose initial $2.2 million gift helped acquire the corridor and develop the trail, and whose family firm, Edward Jones, later supported reconstruction after the 1993 flood, funded the Sedalia-to-Clinton opening ceremony, and financed trail brochures.