Before settlement, American Indians used the Rocheport area, drawn by the nearby river, fertile soils, salt and freshwater springs, and the shelter of bluffs, rock overhangs, and caves. Lewis and Clark noted the area in their journals during their 1804-1806 expedition. After arriving in 1819, John Gray operated a horse ferry there, and in 1825 he advertised his land for sale in the Missouri Intelligencer. Buyers platted the town in 1832. Though first intended to be named Rockport, it became Rocheport, said to be at the insistence of a French missionary in the area in 1825; the name means rocky port. By 1835 Rocheport had eight stores, and in 1837 new ferry boats carried passengers across the river, helping make it an important landing place and ferry crossing for the Boonslick region. In 1840 the Whig Party held its state convention there and nominated William Henry Harrison for president, with delegates arriving by steamboat, wagons, carriages, buggies, and horseback; speakers included George Caleb Bingham, James S. Rollins, Col. Alexander Doniphan, and Abiel Leonard. In Missouri, Martin Van Buren won the election, but Harrison became president and died after a month in office. River traffic drove growth: in 1849, 57 steamboats made 500 landings there, shipping wheat, corn, tobacco, and hemp out and bringing manufactured goods in, while farmers came from 30 miles away to use the landing. Capt. John W. Keiser, a major steamboat owner, lived there in the 1840s. By the 1850s Rocheport was the largest shipping point between St. Louis and St. Joseph, with a population of a little over 700, including at least 200 slaves. Residents also profited by cutting winter ice from the Missouri River and Moniteau Creek and storing it in insulated ice houses. In 1861, at a States Rights Association meeting, Rocheport's citizens agreed to side with the Confederacy. During the Civil War, raiders from both sides, including Bloody Bill Anderson, attacked the town, and one business block and the public school building were burned. Rocheport also faced cholera in 1833, 1849, and 1852, repeated flooding from the Missouri River and Moniteau Creek, and destructive fires in 1892, 1922, and 1940, the last after a train carrying ammunition exploded. After the war the town rebuilt slowly. In 1867 about 100 men began work on the Columbia-Rocheport turnpike, after which a stage ran daily on the route. The Rocheport academy was built in 1868, business prospered, a bank was organized, one of Missouri's first rural telephone lines connected Columbia and Rocheport in 1878, and the first newspaper, The Times, was published from 1868-1869. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad was built through town in 1892, while a ferryboat continued operating until the early 1920s. As the Katy line expanded, crews blasting through Rocheport's bluffs completed the line's only tunnel there in 1893, and the Missouri, Kansas and Eastern Railway was bought by the Katy in 1896. The MKT line remained active until 1986. Through the 1900s Rocheport's population declined from 593 in 1900 to 208 in 2000 as transportation changed: first the railroad reduced the river's importance, then highways drew away traffic and commerce. Rocheport was listed as a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and today it receives visitors arriving by bicycle and car rather than by boats, carriages, or trains.