In 1826, the U.S. Military abandoned Fort Bellefontaine and acquired a 1,700-acre property from the Village of Carondelet, establishing Jefferson Barracks and naming it for President Thomas Jefferson, who died that year. Founded as a school of infantry practice, it served as a departure point for Federal Government operations to open the Louisiana Territory and protect travel along the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis to California. Within a few years it became the largest military post in the United States and, because of its central location, the outfitting and training center for military efforts in the western half of the country. As demand for explosive and ammunition storage grew, the War Department assigned 110 acres on the northern part of the reservation to the St. Louis Arsenal, and on May 30, 1851, Master Builder Francis A. Quinette of St. Louis signed a contract to construct ordnance buildings there. The present Visitors' Center began as an Ordnance Barn around 1878, later served as a tank repair station after World War I, then as a Visitors' House at the Reception Center during World War II, and over time also functioned as the Red and Rose Tavern and a St. Louis County Police Station. In 1983, The Friends of Jefferson Barracks was organized, and from 2000-2003 restoring the Park's Visitor Center, which the Army had reduced to its stone basement, became the group's top priority. East and south on Bagby, two remaining limestone powder magazines survive as museums. The Old Ordnance Room was the first of the two buildings erected at Jefferson Barracks to store gunpowder, and the Powder Magazine, built in 1857 to hold rifles, cannons, gunpowder, and prepared ammunition, used thick limestone walls, an arched ceiling, and a wooden floor so that any accidental explosion would blow through the floor and the falling arches would help smother the fire while leaving the walls and roof intact. During the 1940s, the field directly behind this location hosted baseball games by the Jefferson Barracks Reception Center Missions, a team made up of volunteer enlistment and big league players, which won its inaugural game in April 1942 against the University of Illinois by a score of 9-5.