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St. Joseph, Missouri
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Exciting Past,
Promising
Future...
CLICK HERE for a list of
historical attractions.
St. Joseph is where the Pony Express started and Jesse James ended.
Located on the extreme northwestern edge
of Missouri, St. Joseph is a city
filled with echoes of prosperous merchants, outlaws and those brave
young riders who made the Pony Express a never-to-be-forgotten legend.
It’s also a city of stunningly beautiful historic buildings and
mansions, with a serpentine, well-landscaped parkway system probably
unlike any other in the United States.
In 1993, the city formally celebrated its sesquicentennial, with
70,000 residents proud of its colorful past but looking forward to a new
century and a half of progress.
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Joseph Robidoux
Courtesy of St. Joseph Museums, Inc |
Just 150 years ago, Joseph Robidoux, a smart, personable fur trader
from St. Louis, the booming city 250 miles east on the Mississippi,
filed his plat for St. Joseph, the Missouri River city which he named
after his patron saint. (Missouri became the 24th U.S. state
in 1821.)
But the story of "Joetown" goes back considerably farther
to the establishment of Robidoux’ first trading post in 1826. |
The first
peoples to come into today's northwest Missouri moved from the Great
Lakes area around 1300. They came as a result of tribal warfare in their
original homeland and in search of new land. Later, the arrival and the expansion of the white populations in the east also caused
the tribes to move to new locations. The Missouri Indians, who arrived
around 1650, were the first recorded tribe in this area. They were part
of the Winnebago Tribe of the Great Lakes region. Missouri means "people
having dugout canoes." In the early 1800s the Missouri tribe was defeated by their enemies, the Sac and Osage and the remnants of the
Missouri tribe went to live with the Oto. Today, there are no
full-blooded Missouri Indians.
The first person to leave a recorded description of a journey up the
Missouri River past future St. Joseph was Etienne de Bourgmont in 1714.
However, Frenchmen trading with the Indians had been traveling up and
down the river for many years. Joseph Robidoux, founder of St. Joseph,
first journeyed up the Missouri River from his home in St. Louis in
1799.
In 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from
France.
It included all the land from the
 Gulf of Mexico to today's
Canadian border and from the Mississippi River to Rocky Mountains. To
find out what was in this newly purchased land, President Thomas
Jefferson sent out the first United States-sponsored, military
expedition. The expedition, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark,
left from St. Louis on May 14, 1804. The journey to the Pacific Ocean and back took
a little over two years. They returned to St. Louis on September 23,
1806. On the journey upriver, they passed future St. Joseph, known to
them as St. Michael's Prairie, on July 7. St. Michael's Prairie was a
campsite on the return trip when on September 12, 1806, they met an old
Army friend who was also encamped at the site. From him they learned
what had happened in the United States during their absence. They also
learned that many thought they were dead or had been captured by the
Spanish.
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Lewis & Clark |
Lewis
and Clark opened the way for American fur traders into the Louisiana
Territory and for gradual settlement. The earliest communities grew up
along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Then, in 1821 Missouri became
a state. However, the present-day northwest Missouri, was not included
in the state. It was Indian land, known as the Platte Territory. The
tribes living in the Platte Territory were predominantly the Iowa and
Sac and Fox. It was in the Platte Territory that fur trader Joseph
Robidoux received a license to set up a fur post at Black Snake Hills. He
was the only non-Indian that could legally live in the Platte Territory. |
Joseph Robidoux’s post was located at the point where a stream called
Roy’s Branch empties into the Missouri River. In the spring of 1827,
Robidoux (pronounced Roo-bee-doo) moved his operation about a
mile south to the mouth of Blacksnake Creek, which he decided would be a
better location. Known as Blacksnake Hills, the area was a favorite
gathering spot for several Native American tribes. The bluffs above the
river, unique because of their fertile loose soil, were considered
sacred ground.
Although Missouri had become the 24th U.S. State in 1821,
this area was still Indian Territory. Robidoux was popular with the
various tribes, partly because he spoke several dialects, and because he
was a skilled and experienced trader.
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Finally, in 1837, the federal government bargained with the
Indians for 2 million acres of land. It was called the Platte
Purchase, and it added six northwestern counties to Missouri,
among them Buchanan County, which encompasses St. Joseph. The
Indians received $7,500 and "other considerations" –including a
400-acre reservation across the river in Kansas. Robidoux’
trading post was assigned a post office in 1840. |
St. Joseph Circa 1850
Courtesy of St.
Joseph Museums, Inc |
As for the astute fur trader prepared to
sell new lots for his town, he set down one stipulation: No one could
take possession until he had harvested his crop—marijuana. In those
days, it
was used in the making of hemp.
Robidoux had negotiated with two town planners to design a street
pattern. One, Simeon Kemper, suggested a city with wide avenues and
parks. The other, Frederick A. Smith, devised a plan featuring narrow
streets. The narrow-street plan prevailed. Robidoux reportedly remarked,
"I want to sell my land in lots, not give it away in streets."
The original town was bounded by the Missouri River on the west,
Sixth Street on the east, Messanie Street on the south and Robidoux
Street on the north. The east-west streets were named for Robidoux
family members—second wife Angelique, daughters Messanie and Sylvanie,
and sons Charles, Edmond, Felix, Francis, Jules (for Julius Caesar) and
Faraon.
The settlement grew steadily, but the discovery of gold in California
in 1848 turned it into a boom area. Gold seekers came across Missouri to
St. Joseph by steamboat, to where the city’s location on the westward
bend of the Missouri River made it one of two choice "jumping-off"
points (the other was Independence, about 60 miles southwest), a fact
that city promoters enhanced with aggressive advertising in the eastern
press.
Gold rushers bought supplies here for the westward wagon trek. Some
have estimated that as many as 50,000 passed through in 1849 alone. Some
100,000 more pioneers would crowd the streets, bound for California and
other points west, before trains shrank the distance and took most of
the pain out of the trip.
St. Joseph had a number of distinctions during its early history:
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The first train from the east arrived here February 14, 1859. Until
after the Civil War, St. Joseph was the westernmost point accessible
by rail.
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The Pony Express began here April 3, 1860.
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St. Joseph had its first telephone exchange in 1879. When the city
was linked with the Atchison, Kansas, exchange in 1881, it marked
the first inter-city connection west of Buffalo, New York.
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On the notorious side: Jesse James was assassinated April 3, 1882 by
Robert Ford, after setting up residence to plan more bank holdups.
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In 1887, St. Joseph became the second city in the U.S. (Richmond,
Virginia, was the first) to have electric streetcars.
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The Pony Express |
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Jesse James |
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In 1889, the city hosted the New Era Exposition, in hopes of being
chosen as the site for a future World’s Fair. A disastrous fire
destroyed much of the fair, caused financial ruin for its major
backers and ended any hope of attracting a World’s Fair.
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Wholesale houses—shoes, dry goods and hardware were among the major
ones—boosted St. Joseph’s prosperity during its Golden Age of the
late 19th century. St. Joseph at one time ranked fourth
nationally in dry goods sales, fifth in hardware.
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By 1900, St. Joseph was receiving more than 100 passenger trains a
day.
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Livestock has been a major part of St. Joseph’s economy since
1846.
Swift and Armour were the dominant names through the
first six decades of this century, when employment totals
were 6,000 or
more for the industry here.
It’s been nearly a century since some misguided civic boosters
grossly inflated St. Joseph’s federal census figure to report a
population in 1900 of 102,979. (The story goes that they got the census
taker drunk, then propelled him several times through the same populous
neighborhoods.) It had been 52,324 in 1890, and a more reasonable 77,403
was reported for 1910.The city suffered for years attempting to explain the "population
loss" in the decade after 1900.
 The roles of the railroads and meatpacking houses have declined, but
St. Joseph today remains a regional hub built on a diversified economy.
Agribusiness, foodstuffs, and pet foods are among major manufacturing
commodities.
Efforts to promote tourism have taken on a new emphasis as St. Joseph
seeks to build its share of what is the state’s fastest-growing
industry.
Missouri Western State College (soon to
be Missouri Western State University), founded in 1965, attracts a student
body of over 5,000 since its founding in 1965. (St. Joseph Junior
College dated back to 1915.) The city also boasts a full-time symphony,
two resident theater organizations, a community chorus, a Performing
Arts Association which books national entertainers and numerous
expositions and festivals.
St. Joseph’s colorful history of a century and a half has fulfilled
the vision of renowned naturalist John James Audubon who, in a May,
1843, visit (two months before its official incorporation) described
Robidoux’ settlement as "a delightful place for a populous city that
will be here some 50 years hence."
Boy, have we got news for him!
By: Robert Slater and Jackie Lewin
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