Saint Louis

Saint Louis was the first city of the Trans-Mississippi West and the second permanent settlement in Missouri. Founded in 1764 by the New Orleans Frenchman Laclede as a trading post tapping the rich fur resources of the Missouri Valley, it was named for the canonized French Crusader-King Louis IX. Here on March 10, 1804, Upper Louisiana, from which came six states and parts of seven others, was transferred to the U.S. Missouri, part of Louisiana and later Missouri Territory, became a state in 1820, and the name Missouri, meaning "He of the big canoe," was adopted when Orleans Territory became the State of Louisiana in 1812. Saint Louis served as colonial, territorial, and first state capital, and Alexander McNair, Missouri's first state governor, took office here. Among many notable developments, the first newspaper west of the Mississippi, the Missouri Gazette, was established here in 1808, and a university was chartered here as St. Louis University in 1832; Washington University was chartered in 1853. In 1780 a British and Indian attack on St. Louis was defeated, and in Missouri the Civil War began here at Camp Jackson in 1861, after which Saint Louis became the Federal military base. The Dred Scott Case began here. As a famous river port and early transportation hub, the city carried the westward movement of fur traders, explorers, and settlers, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned here in triumph in 1806. In 1851 track for the Missouri Pacific, the first railroad west of the Mississippi, was laid here, and among the city's bridges was the famous Eads Bridge of 1874. In 1804 Saint Louis had a total French and American population of under 1000, then grew rapidly through immigration from the states and later from Europe, particularly Germany. By 1950 St. Louis, a raw fur market, grain, industrial, and medical center, was the eighth city in the U.S. It became an independent political unit in 1877, having earlier been the seat of justice for one of Missouri's first five counties and before that one of five Spanish districts.

Sappington, Missouri · United States