Katy Trail State Park runs 5.70 miles from Augusta to Matson, with the first four miles away from roads through the farm landscape and bottomland forest of the Missouri River floodplain beneath increasingly taller bluffs. Through openings on the right, the Labadie coal-burning power plant can sometimes be seen on the opposite side of the river. Along this stretch, Jefferson City dolomite, which has towered over the Katy Trail for the last 100 miles, is topped by thick layers of St. Peter sandstone. At the former railroad stop of Klondike at milepost 64.1, concrete silos held silica from this high-grade sandstone, and the old quarry site is now St. Charles County's Klondike Park. From an intersection with the Katy here, a trail climbs to the blufftop area of the park, and benches provide a resting place with a view, including at a natural shelter of St. Peter sandstone at milepost 63.3. After a few tenths of a mile, the route comes alongside the Missouri River, where a Lewis and Clark Expedition historical marker and the Klondike Park public boat launch are located, and where another hiking and biking trail intersects the Katy and leads through Klondike Park. The route soon leaves the river and follows the bluffs into a wide agricultural bottomland. Across the river, Tavern Bluffs were the scene of a dramatic episode from the Lewis and Clark Expedition: on May 23, 1804, Capt. Meriwether Lewis fell 20 feet before stopping his fall with his knife.
