Missouri History Museum

During our recent trip to St. Louis, we had some time between events to check out a local attraction that we hadn’t visited before.  So Laurie, her sister Bonnie and Bonnie’s husband Bill…with yours truly in tow…headed to St. Louis’ 1,300 acre Forest Park for a little historical exploration.

Forest Park’s world renowned St. Louis Zoo with its 1,700 animals offers free admission!  However, we’ve visited the Zoo several times in the past and we recently toured the St. Louis Art Museum.  Both of us have also attended “The Muny” (aka. the Municipal Opera).  Three out of 5 major attractions in Forest Park isn’t bad but that left 2 more for us to explore.

We decided that a visit to the Missouri Historical Museum was in order.  As it turned out, we still didn’t have enough time to see all of it…

The museum focuses on local and regional history.  The Missouri Historical Society was formed in 1866…with the goal of “saving from oblivion the early history of the city and state”.  The first Missouri History Museum opened in 1892.  With the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition/aka., the 1904 World’s Fair, funds became available that allowed for the construction of the Jefferson Memorial Building…which included space for the Missouri History Museum.  Roughly 230,000 people attended the opening in 1913!

Space for the museum was limited until 2000 when the Emerson Center Expansion was built on the reverse side of the Jefferson Memorial Building.  The view above shows the entrance into the expanded facility.  FYI…admission is free!

The Museum has an extensive Charles Lindbergh collection.  It includes two full-sized airplanes and almost 1,900 objects including personal items and gifts… One of the planes…perhaps this one…is a reproduction of the “Spirit of St. Louis” that was used in a Lindbergh biopic that stared Jimmy Stewart as Lindbergh.  An exhibit featuring Lindbergh’s trophies from his historic transatlantic flight brought this museum to prominence in the late 1920s…with 1,300,000 visitors in the first year!

Our visit coincided with the opening of a special exhibit…the Mighty Mississippi…which opened at the museum on 11/23/19.  This exhibit stresses the magnificent Mississippi River’s impact on the various cultures that have grown and prospered around it…and because of it. 

I thought that this ‘name exhibit’ was interesting.  With many names given the river, it appears that the ‘Mississippi’ got its name from its Ojibwe/Algonquin name…or perhaps it was the Dakota, Fox-Sauk, Choctaw or Miami-Illinois peoples.

Displays throughout the Mighty Mississippi exhibit are varied in size, culture and time period.  This particular exhibit includes a mix of items such as a shovel, sandbag and 6-pack of canned water from the 1993 floods, a 1930s - 1990s rain gauge and a slide rule, calculator used by a St. Louis University geologist to study man-made causes to the 1973 floods.

Note: In addition to the 29 locks and dams along the Upper Mississippi River, there are 190 underwater dams and about 3,500 levees that restrict the river’s path and help maintain a shipping channel.

This mobile construction is a bit depressing isn’t it?  This suspended sculpture is a painful display of man’s treatment of the river…and the world's environment as a whole.

This model towboat/pusher was built in 1951.  The real “Harry Dwyer” was built in 1949, the first of many larger more powerful tow boats needed after WWII to provide cargo transportation (especially fuel) for the growing economy. 

Today there are thousands of tow boats and exponentially more barges being used on the Mississippi and other rivers in the USA.  The largest tow company has 110 tugs and towboats with 4,000 barges.  The newest class of towboat/pusher is 180 feet long with 10,000 horsepower and it can move 40 barge tows…

This is an earthenware salt pan dating from between 1000 and 1700.  It was found in Kimmswick Missouri.  These pans were used by Native Americans to collect salt from evaporated spring water.  It was repaired with the straps sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s.  Salt was an important trade item along the Mississippi River among the Mound Builders and later Native American groups.

This mural depicts the busy St. Louis waterfront in the mid-1800s.  As the “Gateway to the West”, the city is located just 15 miles downriver from where the Missouri River and Mississippi river merge.  The first steamboat arrived in July of 1817 and with the river traffic and westbound pioneers, the city soon became a boomtown.  By 1860, the city had a population of over 160,000.

 

By 1850, St. Louis had so much river traffic that it was the second largest port in the USA, with commercial tonnage only exceeded by New York City.  It was the largest city west of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  On peak days, as many as 170 steamboats of all sizes and types lined the levee along the river.

It’s safe to say that 1849 wasn’t a good year for St. Louis.  In May, during the midst of a cholera epidemic that would eventually kill about 10% (4,500 people) of the population, a riverfront fire ignited that inflicted enormous damage.  A paddle wheel steamer caught fire and slowly drifted down the river spreading the fire to 22 other steamboats and other water craft.

 

The flames leaped from the burning steamboats to the buildings along the riverfront.  It kept spreading for more than 8 hours, destroying more than 9 city blocks along with the riverboats and barges along the levee.  Finally, in desperation, the volunteer fire department loaded 6 businesses in front of the fire with kegs of black powder, and blew them up depriving the fire of more structural fuel.

In addition to the river craft at the levee, a total of 430 buildings were destroyed.  Also, this was the first fire in US history where it is known that a firefighter was killed in the line of duty.  He was killed when spreading the black powder in one of the buildings to be blown up.

This is the wheelhouse from the Golden Eagle paddlewheel steamboat.  The wheelhouse dates back to ca. 1930 but the 175’ long boat itself was first launched in 1904 as the William Gage.  Originally the boat was designed for the lower Mississippi cotton trade.  Subsequently she was refurbished and rechristened as the Golden Eagle.

In May of 1947, after a second refurbishing, the Golden Eagle set out downriver from St. Louis en-route to Nashville Tennessee via the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers.  She didn’t get far.  Most of the 91 passengers and crew were sleeping when her steering froze up and she ran aground.  Everyone was evacuated safely but the ship was abandoned where she crashed.  The wheelhouse was subsequently salvaged and restored through the efforts of a St. Louis area teacher’s efforts.

To view a photo of the Golden Eagle after she ran aground, you can go to https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/a-look-back-golden-eagle-steamboat-sinks-in/article_e784b0b2-1f05-55d6-a6e8-49a54c66bbb2.html.  This steamboat was the last wooden hulled steamship to travel the Mississippi River.

This photo shows some of the furnishings one could find on an old time riverboat.  First class cabins were quite luxurious.  The ca. 1850 settee belonged to a southern Illinois riverboat captain.  Note the 1880 era reconstruction carpet bag.  Historically, a carpetbagger was a person from the northern states who went to the South after the Civil War to profit from the Reconstruction.  Many of these folks would be called ‘scammers’ in today’s terminology.

This is the roof bell from the steamboat Elvira.  This ship was built on the Ohio River in 1851 and it was named after the builder’s daughter.  Roof bells were important…mounted high on the superstructure and sounding 3-times whenever arriving at or departing from a port.

The Elvira plied the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers for more than 10 years, finally sinking while running supplies for the Union Army in 1863 during the Civil War.  Her active lifespan was more than twice the average for a river steamboat.  On average, these river steamboats only lasted about 5 years. Wooden hulls were breached, fires occurred and boiler explosions were common.

In the early days over 500 ships were lost due to boiler explosions alone.  More than 6,000 people died in riverboat mishaps.  The boiler explosions and fire aboard the riverboat Sultana near Memphis Tennessee in 1865, led to at least 1,192 deaths and it’s considered the worst maritime disaster in US history.  Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clemens’) brother died as the result of a riverboat boiler explosion…

This is a Metis hide coat.  This quill-embroidered animal hide coat was owned by a member of the Chouteau family.  Pierre Chouteau Jr. was the Manager of the Western Department of the American Fur Company and he may have acquired it during his travels.  The Metis designation indicates people of mixed heritage…combining European styles with the design and technique of the indigenous peoples, resulting in functional outdoor wear.

FYI…the Chouteau family was a wealthy St. Louis fur trading family.  Pierre’s father Jean Pierre, was one of the area’s first settlers as well as part of the early French elite.  Pierre Jr. pioneered the use of steamboats on the Mississippi River.  Later he successfully invested in railroads and mining.  Pierre South Dakota is named for him. 

These 2 items are whelk (marine snail) shell gorgets, archaeological finds from the mound-building Native American civilization that flourished throughout the area from roughly 800 until 1600.  Termed the Mississippian culture or Mound-Builders, almost all dated sites for this culture predate ca. 1540 when Hernando de Soto explored the area.

FYI…gorget is from the French with gorge meaning throat.  Sometimes it has been a protective item for the throat…such as a steel or leather collar or plate armor, or it can be purely ornamental jewelry as worn by various societies throughout history.

This large mural depicts a possible scene showing the mound-builders/Mississippian culture.  The most distinct characteristic of this culture are indeed the ceremonial mounds they left behind.  Cahokia Illinois, right across the Mississippi from St. Louis, includes one of the very largest of these structures at its center.

At its peak ca. 1100, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles and included roughly 120 earthen mounds varying is size, shape and function.  Cahokia’s population may have briefly been greater than London England at that time.  It was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture.

Today, Cahokia Mounds is a National Historic Landmark and a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Want to visit the most important pre-Columbian archaeological site north of Mexico City?  Learn more at https://cahokiamounds.org/.

Mississippian culture collapsed due to the various diseases introduced by Europeans.  The Native Peoples had no resistance to measles or smallpox and the resulting epidemics killed so many people that the social order and political structures were permanently disrupted.  To learn more about this culture, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture.

Our next stop at the Missouri History Museum was across the hall at the Pulitzer Prize Photograph special exhibit featuring photos from the St. Louis Post Dispatch newspaper. (I inserted ‘newspaper’ for the benefit of younger folks who never have looked at one)

On tour from its home in Washington D.C., this exhibit showcases prize-winning photos taken since 1941.   Those photos are interspersed with important images from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the exhibit will be at the museum until January 20, 2020.

To quote the museum’s director of exhibitions, “these photos capture the absolute best of humanity, but they also capture the absolute worst”.  I chose not to include the absolute worst in this post… Man’s inhumanity to man can be pretty depressing.

This first photo is truly famous and heroic too.  The “Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima” from WWII was taken in 1945 by Associated Press Photographer Joe Rosenthal. 

This was the first photo to win a Pulitzer Prize.  Milton Brooks for the Detroit News captured this scene during a massive strike at Ford Motor’s River Rouge Plant.  A strikebreaker was apparently arguing with some striking workers and those workers began beating the man up with their fists and clubs.  Hired thugs were also brought in during this dispute… Brooks took one shot and then hid his camera out of fear that the mob would destroy it.

Now this was one of the ‘fun photos’ on exhibit.  Taken by J.B. Forbes in 1982, “Booth Buddies” features competing baseball announcers, Harry Carey (Chicago Cubs) and Jack Buck (St. Louis Cardinals), as they were clowning around in the KMOX broadcast booth.  

Jack Buck actually worked with Carey when Carey was the Cardinals announcer, taking over from Harry when he moved to the Chicago Cubs.  Buck broadcasted for the Cardinals from 1954 until 2000.  Carey put in 25 years with the Cardinals and another 16 with the Cubs, but during his long career he also covered the St. Louis Browns, the Oakland Athletics and the Chicago White Sox.  Holy Cow, Harry!

Onto the more negative side of the exhibit, this photo is titled “Inside a Sniper’s Nest”.  It was taken in 2013 by Javier Manzano for Agence France-Presse and it is focused on 2 Syrian rebel snipers looking for targets.  With bullets flying and snipers on both sides of this conflict, it had to be a tense time for the photographer...and the snipers.  Note the bullet/shell holes in the wall!

Another negative photo from our world’s recent past.  Tyler Hicks, a photographer for the New York Times took this photo of a terrified woman and her child seeking shelter during the Kenya Mall Massacre in September of 2014.  Hicks had been running errands but hearing there was trouble at the mall he ran in and spotted this scene on the level below him.  Bodies were lying near the woman and child.  The authorities threw Hicks out of the mall right after he took the photo.  At least 67 people were killed in this terrorist attack.  The siege continued for 4 days…

Photos do speak louder than words… Many historic photos in the exhibit feature starvation, brutality, self-immolation and assassination while others feature hope and positive actions.

This is the portion of the Missouri History Museum that includes the original structure…the Jefferson Memorial.  It was the first national monument to President Thomas Jefferson that commemorated his role in completing the Louisiana Purchase.  The purchase of this territory from France basically doubled the size of the United States…of course disregarding any rights to the land by Native Americans.

As stated in the beginning, this building was completed for the 1904 World’s Fair/Louisiana Purchase Exposition.  The western wing of the building houses the Jefferson Gallery and the Lopata World’s Fair Commemorative Gallery, both of which are dedicated to the Exposition.  The elaborate plasterwork, art-nouveau ceiling panels, World’s Fair Murals and Jefferson’s 9 foot tall statue await the visitor.  They await us too as we ran out of time!  We’ll be back!

To learn more and to plan a visit to the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis’ Forest Park, go to https://mohistory.org/museum.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by and taking the tour with us!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave