Saint Louis County

White colonists first visited the county when missionary priests, Illinois French, and Kaskaskia and Tamaroa Indians settled the temporary village of Des Peres from 1700 to 1703 on a site now within St. Louis city limits, 18 years after La Salle claimed the territory for France. The county's first permanent settlement was St. Louis, founded by Pierre Laclede in 1764. Although France had ceded the region to Spain in 1762, the settlements remained French, and other early villages included Creve Coeur, Carondelet, and Florissant, an early Catholic educational center. In the late 1700s, Americans began settling farms on the creeks and rivers, with a Methodist church formed on Cold Water Creek in 1806 and a Baptist church on Fee Fee Creek in 1807. St. Louis and its surrounding settlements were one of five Spanish districts before the American period began in 1804, and then one of the first five counties of Missouri Territory, organized in 1812. St. Louis city and county separated in 1876, and Clayton was laid out as the new county seat in 1878, named for Ralph Clayton, who gave 100 acres of land. The county developed as a suburban and recreational area, with incorporated towns founded outside the city limits of St. Louis. Early county history also included the Spanish establishment of Fort Prince Charles at the mouth of the Missouri in 1767 and the building of Fort Bellefontaine by the U.S. a few miles from the river's mouth in 1805; an Indian trading post and military cantonment, Bellefontaine was one of the first American forts west of the Mississippi, and Zebulon M. Pike left from there on his expedition to the Southwest in 1806. Important county sites include Jefferson Barracks, dating from 1826, National Cemetery, the log cabin home of Ulysses S. and Julia Dent Grant, Rockwoods Reservation, Babler State Park, Concordia Historical Institute Museum, Museum of Transport, Lambert-St. Louis Airport, most of Washington University, Eden Seminary, Concordia Seminary, the Catholic seminaries of Kenrick, St. Stanislaus, and Holy Family, and the colleges of Fontbonne, Chaminade, and Webster.

Clayton, Missouri · United States