The Mississippi River below the Moline Rapids at Rock Island passes
various flourishing cities, including Muscatine and Burlington, the
former having considerable trade in timber and food products, while
Burlington, a much larger place, spreads back from the bluffs and is a
busy railroad city, fronted by a beautiful reach of the river. About
thirty miles below, on the Illinois shore, is Nauvoo, a small town
chiefly raising grapes and wine, but formerly one of the leading
settlements on the river. This town was originally built by the
Mormons under the lead of their prophet, Joseph Smith, in 1838, after
they had been driven from various places in New York, Ohio and
Missouri. Nauvoo flourished greatly, reaching fifteen thousand
population, but dissensions arose and the enmity of the growing
population elsewhere caused riots, in one of which, in 1844, Smith,
who had been arrested and taken to jail at Carthage, Illinois, was
killed. Brigham Young then assumed leadership, and in 1845 removed the
colony over to the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, finally migrating
to the Great Salt Lake in Utah, two years later. Below Nauvoo are the
Lower Rapids of the Mississippi, extending twelve miles to Keokuk, a
beautiful city built partly along the river, but mostly on the summit
of the bluffs, here rising one hundred and fifty feet. Keokuk was a
noted Indian chief, his name meaning the "watchful fox." Des Moines
River, forming the boundary between Iowa and Missouri, flows in at the
lower edge of the city, having come down from the northwest and
passing the Iowa State Capital, Des Moines, at the head of navigation,
where there is a population of sixty thousand and extensive
manufactures. This city has a magnificent Capitol, erected at a cost
of $3,000,000, and its prosperity is largely due to the extensive coal
measures of the neighborhood. It has grown around the site of the
former frontier outpost of Fort Des Moines, built in the early days
for protection against the Sioux. Below are Quincy, Hannibal and
Alton, the latter being just above the confluence with the Missouri,
and then the Mississippi River flows majestically past the levee at
St. Louis, the chief city on its banks, having two great railway
bridges crossing over to the Illinois shore.
When the French held Louisiana, a grant was made in 1762 to Pierre
Ligueste Laclede and his partners to establish, as the "Louisiana Fur
Company," trading-posts on the Mississippi. Laclede in that year came
out from France to New Orleans, and in 1764, in order to open the fur
trade with the Indians on the Missouri, he ascended the Mississippi,
and on February 15th made the first settlement on the site of St.
Louis, building a house and four stores and naming the place in honor
of King Louis XV. of France. He had frequent journeys along the river,
and died upon one of them near the mouth of the Arkansas in 1778. The
post was made the capital of Upper Louisiana, but it grew very slowly,
having only a thousand people when Louisiana was ceded to the United
States in 1803. The development of steamboating and afterwards of the
railway systems, all the great lines seeking St. Louis, gave it rapid
growth subsequently, and its population now reaches seven hundred
thousand. It spreads with its vast railway terminals for nearly twenty
miles along the Mississippi, sweeping in a grand curve past the centre
of the city, which rises in repeated terraces as it extends westward
back from the river, the highest being two hundred feet above the
water-level. It has an enormous trade and extensive manufactures,
being the largest tobacco-making city in the world, and having one of
the greatest American breweries, the Anheuser-Busch Company. Its
Chamber of Commerce, of sandstone in Renaissance, is a noted building,
and its grand Court House, erected as a Greek cross, is surmounted by
a dome three hundred feet high. It also has a new and magnificent City
Hall. St. Louis been singularly free from fires, but its great
disaster was upon May 27, 1896, when a terrific tornado swept through
the city, killing three hundred people and destroying property valued
at $10,000,000.
The chief institution of learning is Washington University, which has
fine new buildings in Forest Park on the western verge of the city,
and cares for seventeen hundred students. The park system is very
extensive, spreading partially around the built-up portions and
embracing twenty-one hundred acres. The chief of these are the Forest
Park, with fine trees and drives, the Tower Grove Park, Lafayette and
Carondelet Parks, and in the northern suburbs O'Fallon Park, having
adjacent the spacious Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries. The gem of
the system, however, is the Missouri Botanical Garden of seventy-five
acres, the best of its kind in the country, which was bequeathed to
the city by Henry Shaw, a native of Sheffield, England, who came to
St. Louis, grew up with the city, and died there in 1889. The great
attraction of St. Louis is its splendid bridge crossing the
Mississippi, built by James B. Eads and completed in 1874 at a cost of
$10,000,000, carrying a railway across, with a highway on the upper
deck, being more than two thousand yards long, and resting on arches
rising fifty-five feet above the water. The railway is tunnelled
under the city for nearly a mile, and leads to the Union Station,
which is one of the largest in the world. The Merchants' Bridge, which
cost $3,000,000, brings another railway over, three miles above, and a
third bridge is projected. The vast aggregation of railways centering
at St. Louis also uses another bridge route north of the city,
crossing the Missouri just above its mouth and then the Mississippi to
Alton on the Illinois shore. The military post of St. Louis is
Jefferson Barracks down the river, an important station of the United
States army.
[Illustration: Bridge Crossing the Mississippi at St. Louis]