Before Interstate 55 and large riverside industries were built, DeMenil Place overlooked an expansive view of the Mississippi River, the original interstate of the Midwest, which cut through otherwise impenetrable forests and foreboding prairies and connected St. Louis, a fur trading post reached through New Orleans, to the rest of the world. In 1767, three years after St. Louis was founded where the Gateway Arch now stands, Frenchman Clement De Lor de Treget established the farming village of Carondelet on the Mississippi's banks. Although Carondelet lay only five miles south of St. Louis, travel between the two villages was possible only by the river until "The Road To Carondelet" linked them. That road later became known as Carondelet Avenue and, at the turn of the 20th century, was officially renamed South Broadway. It was still called Carondelet Avenue when a horse railway line opened along it in 1864, carrying commuters from the city's north end south to Keokuk Street, with stops at the terminus of Cherokee Street. The horse railway and the relocation of the growing Lemp Brewery to Carondelet and Cherokee spurred the development of Cherokee as a branch street radiating from Carondelet Road.
