The Katy Trail leaves the Missouri River at Boonville and heads southwest into Cooper County for 11.5 miles to Pilot Grove. Near the trailhead stands the 1912 Spanish Mission-style Boonville depot, now home to the Boonville Tourism Center, and outside it the Boonville Katy Caboose Museum occupies Caboose 8134 and is open to visitors. Riders make a gradual ascent out of Boonville and the Missouri River valley on Lard Hill, which local legend says was named after a Katy train killed a woman's pig but refused to pay her more than $5, after which she melted the pig's fat into lard and, with her children, spread it on the tracks each morning for weeks so trains slipped and skated uphill until the railroad made full compensation. The Katy's only overhead crossing of Interstate 70 is at milepost 196. The rest of the way to Pilot Grove crosses a rolling landscape dominated by hay and crop fields. At milepost 197 is the site of Prairie Lick, once an MKT railhead for agricultural products, and around milepost 199 there are long vistas back toward Boonville and the Missouri River.
