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Early Paleo-Indian cultures left behind many clues to their daily life through the tools that they used. These early people produced projectile tips that would later be called Clovis points, named for Clovis, New Mexico, where they were first identified. This spear or dart tip would have been formed by percussion flaking the general shape …
Clovis Point
12 thousand - 11.7 thousand years ago
This 200-year old dugout canoe is an example of the type used by Indigenous people and early European colonists for transportation and trade. By the 17th century, the Osage settled in central and western portions of the state along the Missouri and Osage Rivers. Upon French arrival to the area, the Osage established an extensive …
Dugout Canoe
1750-1820
Southeast Missouri contained one of the largest repositories of lead in the world. More than 1,000 miles of mine tunnels stretch across the region known as the Old Lead Belt. The first European mineralogical expeditions into the area were in 1700. Early explorers reported that a “shiny gray mineral… that was everywhere, often lying on the …
Missouri Mines
1800s - Present
Missouri’s thriving beer industry can trace its roots to Adam Lemp, a German immigrant who introduced the lager style to St. Louis in the late 1830s. After a stint in Cincinnati, Lemp moved to St. Louis, where he opened a grocery store to sell his homebrewed beer alongside other goods. Realizing a greater demand for …
Corking Machine
1830 - 1840
This working Washington Printing Press from the 1840s currently sits in the Strehly House in Hermann. The Strehly House was built in the 1840s and owned by the same family for more than 100 years. It acted as the publication site of the first German newspaper west of the Mississippi River in 1843. The newspaper …
Washington Printing Press
1840s
Conestoga wagons, such as the one pictured here, were used to transport people and freight westward on the California, Oregon, Mormon, and Santa Fe trails in the decades before the construction of transcontinental railroad lines. This type of wagon was first built in the 18th century in Pennsylvania and became a popular choice for westward …
Conestoga Wagon
1850 - 1860
The Locomotive O’Sullivan was built in 1855 and held great importance to Missouri’s early railroad history. This locomotive was built to run on the Pacific Railroad, one of the first railroad lines to cross the state of Missouri and with the ultimate goal to be the first line to span the American continent. The O’Sullivan …
O’Sullivan Locomotive
1855
This five-hundred-pound anchor is from The Steamship Arabia. The size of the anchor surprises many. The Arabia’s size, including the weight of its cargo and passengers, and the strong currents of the “Mighty Missouri River ” mandated the anchor’s bulk. The anchor is shown resting on a piece of the original wooden deck. Next to …
Steamboat Arabia’s Anchor
1856
The Pony Express operated for just 18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861. Stretching from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, riders would carry mail across more than 1,800 miles in 10 days. While efficient, the Pony Express raced against the transcontinental telegraph line. On October 26, 1861 the line was complete, connecting California …
Pony Express
1860-1861
In the late 19th century, prostitution became an increasingly prevalent issue in St. Louis. Unable to control it, city leaders agreed the best option was to regulate the industry to contain undesirable behavior and prevent the spread of venereal disease. On July 9, 1870, St. Louis approved the Social Evil Ordinance, making St. Louis the …
Social Evil Hospital
1873
Mercy Hospital in Springfield began on October 29, 1891 when three Sisters of Mercy – Sister M. Alacoque Kelley, Sister M. Xavier Kinsella, and Sister M. Stanislaus Tennelly – arrived in Springfield from St. Louis to open St. John’s Hospital. They were brought here by a Hospital Aid Society at the behest of local physician …
St. John’s Hospital
1891
This 243-foot stone tunnel in Rocheport is the only one of its kind along the Katy Trail. Completed in 1892, the structure is a reminder of the trail’s roots as a corridor for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy) Railroad. In the late 19th century, the Katy Railroad serviced Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Unlike most railroads, the Katy …
Katy Trail Rocheport Tunnel
1892 - present
Glass lantern slide belonging to Arthur Hildreth, created by the US Slide Company of Kansas City, Missouri. It is a color image of the members of the first class of osteopathy on glass with Andrew Taylor Still in the center standing next to a skeleton. On October 3rd, 1892, Andrew Taylor Still began classes at …
First Class of the American School of Osteopathy
1892
Alley Spring is the seventh largest spring in Missouri, discharging approximately 81 million gallons of water per day. This continuous flow of water provided enough power to operate a grist mill, and one was constructed in 1868 to support the town of Alley and its population. Around 1894, George Washington McCaskill built the present standing …
Alley Spring & Mill
1893 - Present
Walter Majors was born to Weaver and Payton Majors in 1879. He was an inventor and entrepreneur who is credited with building and driving the first automobile in Springfield, Missouri. Majors owned a bicycle shop in Springfield off Jefferson Street near the square. He used supplies at his shop, including wagon-wheel spokes and bicycle tires, …
Walter Majors’ Machine
1901
This picture is reminiscent of the large dragline excavators used by engineers to create hundreds of miles of drainage ditches and canals in the Southeast Missouri Bootheel region. The project, known as the Little River Drainage District (LRDD), was one of the most significant land transformation projects ever undertaken, encompassing over 500 thousand acres. After …
Drainage Reclamation
1909 - 1940
This tin of “Wonderful Hair and Scalp Preparation” represents Madame C.J. Walker’s innovation and the life-changing opportunities she offered Black women in the early 20th century. Drawing inspiration from her time in St. Louis, Madame C.J. Walker developed this hair and scalp ointment to help Black women restore their natural hair. As her small operation …
Madame C.J. Walker Hair Tin
1910, ca.
On October 30, 1914, Kansas City’s Union Station opened to the public before a crowd of 100,000 people. Designed by the Chicago-based architect Jarvis Hunt, the Beaux-Arts style building is perhaps the city’s best representation of the City Beautiful Movement. Union Station is over 850,000 square feet and features ornate ceiling details, a grand hall, …
Union Station Kansas City
1914 - Present
Published in 1916, this May-June magazine issue from the Willows Maternity Sanitarium highlights a hidden yet complex network of seven mother-baby homes that operated within Kansas City during the twentieth century. This network thrived due to the city’s centralized location in the national railroad system and Missouri’s relaxed adoption laws. Women came to these Kansas …
The Willows
1916
This photo from the St. Louis Post Dispatch of October 1918 shows American Red Cross stretcher bearers taking a patient from a house at Edzel and Page Avenues during the Spanish influenza pandemic. All but one person is masked as they transport the patient to the hospital. This scene would have been commonplace across Missouri …
St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps
1918
On March 11, 1920, a large tornado traveled through southern Taney County, leaving death and devastation in its wake. Melva, a modest mining and railroad town along the Missouri Pacific line, was completely destroyed by the storm. The tornado took eleven lives and left only foundations intact. Damage to stores, homes, and other buildings amounted …
Lucy Woods Home
1920
First published in 1917 by prominent agricultural scientist and educator Dr. George Washington Carver, this bulletin on growing and preparing peanuts speaks to Carver’s larger mission throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Witnessing how decades of cotton and tobacco farming had depleted soil in the rural South, Dr. Carver encouraged farmers to grow …
Bulletin No. 31 – George Washington Carver
1925
Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974) achieved international fame after completing the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927. A Detroit native, Lindbergh took an interest in engineering and aviation from an early age, becoming a barnstormer at age twenty-three before enlisting in the Army Air Service. After completing his service, Lindbergh …
Charles Lindbergh Logbook
1927
These moonshine still photographs were captured by folklorist Vance Randolph in 1930. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, Randolph moved to Pineville in the 1920s, and spent the rest of his life documenting and writing about life in the Ozarks. His first book, The Ozarks, offers a look into the customs and traditions of the region ranging …
Moonshine Still
1930
The Bagnell Dam was built by the Union Electric Light and Power Company between 1929 and 1931. Construction began two months before the stock market crash of 1929 and became the only major construction project in the nation during the Great Depression. Job seekers from across the country flocked to the Ozarks for work. Records …
Bagnell Dam
1932 - Present
Excelsior Springs, Missouri, emerged as a tourist and health treatment destination after mineral waters were discovered at nearby Siloam Springs in 1880. The area’s extensive number of mineral water springs and wells and the construction of fine hotels such as the Elms and other tourist amenities contributed to the reputation of the area as a …
Hall of Waters – Excelsior Springs
1936 - present
The area that encompasses Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site and Park was originally settled by Waltus Lockett Watkins in the 1830s. His first dwelling was a small log cabin, but by the 1850s Waltus had begun his stately brick home that can still be viewed today. Around the same time, the woolen industry was …
Watkins Woolen Mill State Park & State Historic Site
1939 - Present
“Ellie,” Aircraft NC18137, is a retired Lockheed Electra 12-A aircraft on display at the TWA Museum in Kansas City. Constructed in 1937 by the Lockheed Corporation, Ellie served as a TWA executive transport and aeronautical research laboratory from 1940 to 1945. Research collected from the plane’s five-year tenure helped develop important technology like static discharge …
Lockheed Electra 12-A Aircraft “Ellie”
1940 - 1945
In February 1941, Springfield was chosen as the site of the O’Reilly General Army Hospital, to be located on a 160-acre reservation bounded by Division Street, Fremont Avenue, and Pythian Street and Glenstone Avenue, an area later occupied in large part by Evangel University. The staff of O’Reilly was recognized as being among the best …
O’Reilly General Army Hospital Wheelchair
1941 - 1952
In 1942, the US Army established a training site for gilder crews two miles south of Knob Knoster that would eventually become Whiteman Air Force Base. Although the site was deactivated after World War II, improvements were made beginning in 1951 for its return to service. The site became home to the 340th Bombardment Wing …
Whiteman Air Force Base
1942 - Present
In 1876, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company reorganized and renamed its southwest branch the St. Louis and San Francisco Railways, also known as the Frisco. As the Frisco grew, the company became one of Springfield’s largest employers. Railroad buildings became a prominent part of Springfield’s landscape. The Frisco’s repair shops featured a roundhouse capable of …
FRISCO Railroad Mortgage Income Bond
1955
In the early twentieth century, Missouri’s hospitals engaged in discriminatory practices. Frustrated by lack of care and educational opportunities, Black leaders sought to establish racially segregated facilities to meet their community’s needs. In 1937, Homer G. Phillips Hospital opened its doors to African American students and patients in St. Louis. Located at 2601 Whittier Street, …
Homer G. Phillips Nursing Cap & Dress
1956
White River floods occurred regularly throughout Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas affecting many outlining towns including the city of Branson. As the population of the region grew, a solution to flooding had to be considered. Congress initially authorized the construction of a dam with the Flood Control Act of 1941, but construction was delayed by …
Table Rock Dam Construction
1956
The St. Louis Zoo, established in 1904, is one of the country’s leading zoological institutions focusing on animal management, research, conservation, and education. The Zoo owes much of its national recognition to Marlin Perkins, who quit college to join the Zoo in 1926. Over the next eleven years, as Director of the Reptile Exhibits, Perkins …
“Mr. Moke” – St. Louis Zoo
1960 - 1969
The St. Louis Gateway Arch, which towers 630 feet above the Mississippi River and the city that the river helped build, commemorates the 200th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis and the city’s role as the gateway to America’s westward expansion. The arch, designed by architect Eero Saarinen and architectural engineer Hannskart Bandel, sits …
Gateway Arch National Park
1963 - Present
In 1987, The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) was formed in New York City in response to government inaction during the AIDS Crisis. Numerous ACT-UP chapters were established across the nation, including one in Kansas City, founded in September 1988 by Jon Barnett and David Weeda. ACT-UP/KC organized locally to aid and fight for …
Act Up Kansas City Buttons
1987
This photograph depicts eight wind turbines in a rural field in Northwest Missouri. Turbines represent a source of renewable power and showcase the trajectory of Missouri’s energy industry. At the turn of the twentieth century, the state had a few electrical generators in its largest cities and relied on coal-powered steam turbines to keep the …
Wind Turbines
2009
After the stay at home order was lifted in Springfield, hair salons were able to reopen as long as thestylist and clients both wore masks. Two stylists at this Great Clips hair salon at 1864 S. Glenstone in thePlaza Shopping Center tested positive for COVID-19 and saw 139 clients while contagious. The storymade national news …
Great Clips
2020