Katy Trail State Park became one of the most successful rail-to-trail conversion projects in the United States over its 25-year history and, as the country'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 supporting existing towns and helping new ones such as Mokane and Tebbetts arise. After severe flooding in the fall of 1986 washed out several miles of track, and with repair costs high, rail use declining, and the company in financial trouble, operations ceased; on Oct. 4, 1986, trains 101 and 102 became the last to use the corridor from Sedalia to Machens. Under the National Trails System Act Amendments of 1983, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources obtained a certificate of interim trail use for that corridor in April 1987 and developed the trail. First opened in April 1990 between Rocheport and McBaine as the Missouri River State Trail, it gained another section in August 1990 from Augusta to just north of Defiance, was officially renamed Katy Trail State Park in 1991, extended from St. Charles to just past Sedalia by 1996, reached Clinton in September 1999 through a Union Pacific Railroad donation, and was completed in 2011 with the opening of the last 12-mile section between St. Charles and Machens, creating the 240-mile Katy Trail. The park's creation and growth depended heavily on community support, especially from Ted and Pat Jones, whose initial $2.2 million donation made acquisition and development of the MKT corridor possible, and from Edward Jones, which later supported reconstruction after the 1993 flood, opening events, and trail publications.