.jpg){kind=link}
The story
History
Mississippian culture and European exploration
The area that became St. Louis was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture, which built numerous temple and residential earthwork mounds on both sides of the Mississippi River. Their major regional center was at Cahokia Mounds, active from 900 to 1500. Due to numerous major earthworks within St. Louis boundaries, the city was nicknamed "Mound City". These mounds were mostly demolished during the city's development. Historic Native American tribes in the area encountered by early Europeans included the Siouan-speaking Osage people, whose territory extended west, and the Illiniwek. Sugarloaf Mound in South St. Louis was repatriated to the Osage Nation in 2025.
European exploration of the area was first recorded in 1673, when French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled through the Mississippi River valley. Five years later, La Salle claimed the region for France as part of La Louisiane, also known as Louisiana. The earliest European settlements in the Illinois Country (also known as Upper Louisiana) were built by the French during the 1690s and early 1700s at Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and Fort de Chartres. Migrants from the French villages on the east side of the Mississippi River, such as Kaskaskia, also founded Ste. Genevieve in the 1730s.
In 1764, after France lost the Seven Years' War, Pierre Laclède and his stepson Auguste Chouteau founded what was to become the city of St. Louis. (French lands east of the Mississippi had been ceded to Great Britain and the lands west of the Mississippi to Spain; Catholic France and Spain were 18th-century allies. Louis XV of France and Charles III of Spain were cousins, both from the House of Bourbon.) The French families built the city's economy on the fur trade with the Osage, and with more distant tribes along the Missouri River. The Chouteau brothers gained a monopoly from Spain on the fur trade with Santa Fe. French colonists used African slaves as domestic servants and workers in the city.
During the negotiations for the 1763 Treaty of Paris, French negotiators agreed to transfer France's colonial territories west of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to New Spain to compensate for Spanish territorial losses during the war. These areas remained under Spanish control until 1803, when they were transferred to the French First Republic. During the American Revolutionary War, St. Louis was unsuccessfully attacked by British-allied Native Americans in the 1780 Battle of St. Louis.
Founding
The founding of St. Louis was preceded by a trading business between Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent and Pierre Laclède (Liguest) in late 1763. St. Maxent invested in a Mississippi River expedition led by Laclède, who searched for a location to base the company's fur trading operations. Though Ste. Genevieve was already established as a trading center, he sought a place less prone to flooding. He found an elevated area overlooking the flood plain of the Mississippi River, not far south from its confluence with the Missouri and Illinois rivers. In addition to having an advantageous natural drainage system, there were nearby forested areas to supply timber and grasslands which could easily be converted for agricultural purposes. Laclède declared that this place "might become, hereafter, one of the finest cities in America". He dispatched his 14-year-old stepson, Auguste Chouteau, to the site, with the support of 30 settlers in February 1764.
Laclède arrived at the future town site two months later and produced a plan for St. Louis based on the New Orleans street plan. The default block size was 240 by 300 feet, with just three long avenues running parallel to the west bank of the Mississippi. He established a public corridor of 300 feet fronting the river, but later this area was released for private development.
For the city's first few years, it was not recognized by any governments. Although the settlement was thought to be under the control of the Spanish government, no one asserted any authority over it, and thus St. Louis had no local government. This vacuum led Laclède to assume civil control, and all problems were disposed in public settings, such as communal meetings. In addition, Laclède granted new settlers lots in town and the surrounding countryside. In hindsight, many of these original settlers thought of these first few years as "the golden age of St. Louis". In 1763, the Native Americans in the region around St. Louis began expressing dissatisfaction with the victorious British, objecting to their refusal to continue to the French tradition of supplying gifts to Natives. Odawa chieftain Pontiac began forming a pan-tribal alliance to counter British control over the region but received little support from the indigenous residents of St. Louis. By 1765, the city began receiving visits from representatives of the British, French, and Spanish governments.
St. Louis was transferred to the French First Republic in 1800 (although all of the colonial lands continued to be administered by Spanish officials), then sold by the French to the U.S. in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. St. Louis became the capital of, and gateway to, the new territory. Shortly after the official transfer of authority was made, the Lewis and Clark Expedition was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson. The expedition departed from St. Louis in May 1804 along the Missouri River to explore the vast territory. There were hopes of finding a water route to the Pacific Ocean, but the party had to go overland in the Upper West. They reached the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River in summer 1805. They returned, reaching St. Louis on September 23, 1806. Both Lewis and Clark lived in St. Louis after the expedition. Many other explorers, settlers, and trappers (such as Ashley's Hundred) would later take a similar route to the West.
Read the full text
19th century
The city elected its first municipal legislators (called trustees) in 1808. Steamboats first arrived in St. Louis in 1817, improving connections with New Orleans and eastern markets. Missouri was admitted as a state in 1821. St. Louis was incorporated as a city in 1822, and continued to develop largely due to its busy port and trade connections.
Immigrants from Ireland and Germany arrived in St. Louis in significant numbers starting in the 1840s, and the population of St. Louis grew from less than 20,000 inhabitants in 1840, to 77,860 in 1850, to more than 160,000 by 1860. By the mid-1800s, St. Louis had a greater population than New Orleans.
Settled by many Southerners in a slave state, the city was split in political sympathies and became polarized during the American Civil War. In the decades preceding the war, tensions ran high between abolitionists and pro-slavery residents, exemplified by the repeated destruction of abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy's printing press and his eventual murder by a mob in nearby Alton, Illinois in 1837. In 1861, 28 civilians were killed in a clash with Union troops. The war hurt St. Louis economically, due to the Union blockade of river traffic to the south on the Mississippi River. The St. Louis Arsenal constructed ironclads for the Union Navy.
Slaves worked in many jobs on the waterfront and on the riverboats. Given the city's location close to the free state of Illinois and others, some slaves escaped to freedom. Others, especially women with children, sued in court in freedom suits, and several prominent local attorneys aided slaves in these suits. About half the slaves achieved freedom in hundreds of suits before the American Civil War began in 1861.
After the war, St. Louis profited via trade with the West, aided by the 1874 completion of the Eads Bridge, named for its design engineer. Industrial developments on both banks of the river were linked by the bridge, the second in the Midwest over the Mississippi River after the Hennepin Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. The bridge connects St. Louis, Missouri to East St. Louis, Illinois. The Eads Bridge became a symbolic image of the city of St. Louis, from the time of its erection until 1965 when the Gateway Arch Bridge was constructed. The bridge crosses the St. Louis riverfront between Laclede's Landing, to the north, and the grounds of the Gateway Arch, to the south. Today the road deck has been restored, allowing vehicular and pedestrian traffic to cross the river. The St. Louis MetroLink light rail system has used the rail deck since 1993. An estimated 8,500 vehicles pass through it daily.
On August 22, 1876, the city of St. Louis voted to secede from St. Louis County and become an independent city, and, following a recount of the votes in November, officially did so in March 1877. The 1877 St. Louis general strike caused significant upheaval, in a fight for the eight-hour day and the banning of child labor.
Industrial production continued to increase during the late 19th century. Major corporations such as the Anheuser-Busch brewery, Ralston Purina company and Desloge Consolidated Lead Company were established at St. Louis which was also home to several brass era automobile companies, including the Success Automobile Manufacturing Company; St. Louis is the site of the Wainwright Building, a skyscraper designed in 1892 by architect Louis Sullivan.
20th century
In 1900, the entire streetcar system was shut down by a several months-long strike, with significant unrest occurring in the city and violence against the striking workers.
In 1904, the city hosted the World's Fair and the Olympics, becoming the first non-European city to host the games. The formal name for the 1904 World's Fair was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Permanent facilities and structures remaining from the fair are located in Forest Park, and other notable structures within the park's boundaries include the St. Louis Art Museum, the St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri History Museum, and Tower Grove Park and the Botanical Gardens.
After the Civil War, social and racial discrimination in housing and employment were common in St. Louis. In 1916, during the Jim Crow Era, St. Louis passed a residential segregation ordinance saying that if 75% of the residents of a neighborhood were of a certain race, no one from a different race was allowed to move in. That ordinance was struck down in a court challenge, by the NAACP, after which racial covenants were used to prevent the sale of houses in certain neighborhoods to "persons not of Caucasian race". Again, St. Louisans offered a lawsuit in challenge, and such covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 in Shelley v. Kraemer.
In 1926, Douglass University, a historically black university was founded by B. F. Bowles in St. Louis, and at the time no other college in St. Louis County admitted black students.
In the first half of the 20th century, St. Louis was a destination in the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South seeking better opportunities. During World War II, the NAACP campaigned to integrate war factories. In 1964, civil rights activists protested at the construction of the Gateway Arch to publicize their effort to gain entry for African Americans into the skilled trade unions, where they were underrepresented. The Department of Justice filed the first suit against the unions under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Between 1900 and 1929, St. Louis, had about 220 automakers, close to 10 percent of all American carmakers, about half of which built cars exclusively in St. Louis. Notable names include Dorris, Gardner and Moon.
In the first part of the century, St. Louis had some of the worst air pollution in the United States. In April 1940, the city banned the use of soft coal mined in nearby states. The city hired inspectors to ensure that only anthracite was burned. By 1946, the city had reduced air pollution by about 75%.
De jure educational segregation continued into the 1950s, and de facto segregation continued into the 1970s, leading to a court challenge and interdistrict desegregation agreement. Students have been bused mostly from the city to county school districts to have opportunities for integrated classes, although the city has created magnet schools to attract students.
St. Louis, like many Midwestern cities, expanded in the early 20th century due to industrialization, which provided jobs to new generations of immigrants and migrants from the South. It reached its peak population of 856,796 at the 1950 census. Suburbanization from the 1950s through the 1990s dramatically reduced the city's population, as did restructuring of industry and loss of jobs. The effects of suburbanization were exacerbated by the small geographical size of St. Louis due to its earlier decision to become an independent city, and it lost much of its tax base. During the 19th and 20th century, most major cities aggressively annexed surrounding areas as residential development occurred away from the central city; however, St. Louis was unable to do so.
Several urban renewal projects were built in the 1950s, as the city worked to replace old and substandard housing. Some of these were poorly designed and resulted in problems. One prominent example, Pruitt–Igoe, became a symbol of failure in public housing, and was torn down less than two decades after it was built. The degradation and razing of Mill Creek Valley in this time was featured as an example of disenfranchisement in the 2024 Reparations Commission Report.
Since the 1980s, several revitalization efforts have focused on Downtown St. Louis.
21st century
The urban revitalization projects that started in the 1980s continued into the new century. The city's old garment district, centered on Washington Avenue in the Downtown and Downtown West neighborhoods, experienced major development starting in the late 1990s as many of the old factory and warehouse buildings were converted into lofts. The American Planning Association designated Washington Avenue as one of 10 Great Streets for 2011. The Cortex Innovation Community, located within the city's Central West End neighborhood, was founded in 2002 and has become a multi-billion dollar economic engine for the region, with companies such as Microsoft and Boeing currently leasing office space. The Forest Park Southeast neighborhood in the central corridor has seen major investment starting in the early 2010s. Between 2013 and 2018, over $50 million worth of residential construction has been built in the neighborhood. The population of the neighborhood has increased by 19% from the 2010 to 2020 Census.
The St. Louis Rams of the National Football League controversially returned to Los Angeles in 2016. The city of St. Louis sued the NFL in 2017, alleging the league breached its relocation guidelines to profit at the expense of the city. In 2021, the NFL and Rams owner Stan Kroenke agreed to settle out of court with the city for $790 million.
Tornadoes of St. Louis
St. Louis since official record-keeping began in 1950, has seen numerous tornadoes occur within the city or its metropolitan areas. Even before 1950, the area endured many deadly, and devastating tornadoes. On 8 March 1871, an estimated F3 tornado tracked through the central business district, killing 9 people and injuring 60 others before ending before ending in East St. Louis, Illinois. On 27 May 1896 during a major tornado outbreak sequence, an F4-estimated storm struck the downtown area in Missouri, and eastern metro in Illinois. The tornado killed at least 255 people and injured over a thousand others, becoming one of the deadliest and most destructive tornadoes in American history. During the 20th century, in both of February 1959 and January 1967, two separate tornado outbreaks struck around the region, the strongest being F4 tornadoes of their respective outbreaks. The 1959 F4 tornado was the third deadliest to occur around the St. Louis area, killing 21. The first of these two tornadoes also brought the inquiry for tornado sirens in the city, while the 1967 storm came to the conclusion and installed them.In the modern era of the 21st century, the city and metro continued to foresee these impactful events. On Good Friday, 22 April 2011, a violent EF4 tornado impacted the northern suburbs and St. Louis Lambert International Airport, towards Granite City, Illinois. It was the first violent (F4/EF4+) tornado to occur within the limits since the 1967 tornado, however it killed no people and only caused five injuries. On 16 May 2025, a massive EF3 tornado, up to 1.8 miles (2.9 km) wide, struck parts of St. Louis County and City, killing 5 people before moving across the Mississippi River into Illinois and dissipating. This was the largest tornado ever recorded to occur in the region. According to mayor Cara Spencer, the tornado produced up to $1.6 billion in damage, and Missouri governor Mike Kehoe stated on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that the scope of residential damage was the worst since 22 May 2011, when an EF5 tornado caused devastating damage in Joplin, Missouri over a decade prior.
Parks and recreation
The city operates more than 100 parks, with amenities that include sports facilities, playgrounds, concert areas, picnic areas, and lakes. Forest Park, located on the western edge of city, is the largest, occupying 1,400 acres of land, making it almost twice as large as Central Park in New York City. The park is home to five major institutions, including the St. Louis Art Museum, the St. Louis Zoo, the St. Louis Science Center, the Missouri History Museum, and the Muny amphitheatre. Another significant park in the city is Gateway Arch National Park, which was known as Jefferson National Expansion Memorial until 2018 and is located on the riverfront in downtown St. Louis. The centerpiece of the park is the 630-foot (192 m) tall Gateway Arch, a National Memorial designed by noted architect Eero Saarinen and completed on October 28, 1965. Also part of the historic park is the Old Courthouse, where the first two trials of Dred Scott v. Sandford were held in 1847 and 1850.
Other parks include the Missouri Botanical Garden, Tower Grove Park, Carondelet Park, and Citygarden. The Missouri Botanical Garden, a private garden and botanical research facility, is a National Historic Landmark and one of the oldest botanical gardens in the United States. The Garden features 79 acres of horticultural displays from around the world. This includes a Japanese strolling garden, Henry Shaw's original 1850 estate home and a geodesic dome called the Climatron. Immediately south of the Missouri Botanical Garden is Tower Grove Park, a gift to the city by Henry Shaw. Citygarden is an urban sculpture park located in downtown St. Louis, with art from Fernand Léger, Aristide Maillol, Julian Opie, Tom Otterness, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Mark di Suvero. The park is divided into three sections, each of which represent a different theme: river bluffs; flood plains; and urban gardens. Another downtown sculpture park is the Serra Sculpture Park, with the 1982 Richard Serra sculpture Twain.
From Wikipedia’s article on St. Louis, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5