Soon after Thomas Jefferson became president of the United States, he bought from France the land known as Louisiana for $15,000,000. This sum seemed a great deal of money for a young nation to pay out, but the Louisiana Purchase covered nearly 900,000 square miles and extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. So when one stops to think that the United States secured the absolute control of the Mississippi and more than doubled its former area at a price less than three cents an acre, it is easier to understand why Jefferson bought than why France sold.

When Louisiana became part of the United States in 1803, St. Louis was a straggling frontier village, frequented mostly by boatmen and trappers. It had been established as a trading post back in 1764 by a party of French trappers from New Orleans, and had, from the first, monopolized the fur trade of the upper Mississippi and Missouri River country. Here hunters and trappers brought the spoils of distant forests. Here the surrounding tribes of Indians came to trade with the friendly French. Here countless open boats were loaded with skins and furs and then floated down the Mississippi.

Notwithstanding this flourishing trade, the growth of the settlement was slow. In 1803 the population numbered less than one thousand, made up of French trappers and hunters, a few other Europeans and Americans, and a considerable number of Indians, half-breeds, and negro slaves.

But as soon as Louisiana belonged to the United States, a new era began in the West. Emigrants from the Eastern states poured over the Appalachian Mountains. St. Louis lay right in the path of this overland east-to-west travel. From here Lewis and Clark started, in 1804, on their famous exploring trip of nearly two years and a half, up the Missouri River, to find out for the country what Louisiana was like. It was here that emigrants headed for the Oregon country stopped to make final preparations and lay in supplies. The remote trading post of the eighteenth century was suddenly transformed into a wide-awake bustling town.

Furs were now no longer the only article of trade. The newly settled Mississippi valley was producing larger crops each year. Because of the poor roads, overland transportation to the markets on the Atlantic was out of the question, and trade was dependent on the great inland waterways. Early in the century, keel boats and barges carried the products of field and forest down the Mississippi. Then came the arrival of the first steamboat, the real beginning of St. Louis' great prosperity, working wonders for this inland commerce whose growth kept pace with the marvelous development of the rich Middle West.

St. Louis, lying on the west bank of the Mississippi, between the mouths of the Ohio and Missouri rivers and not far from the Illinois, became the natural center of this north-and-south river traffic. By 1860 it was the most important shipping point west of the Alleghenies.

Meanwhile railroad building had begun in the West. Ground was broken in 1850 for St. Louis' first railway, the Missouri Pacific. Other roads were begun during the next two years. In a short time the whole country was covered with a network of railroads, and a change in the methods of transportation followed. The steamboats were unable to compete with their new rivals in speed—a tremendous advantage in carrying passengers and perishable freight—and their former importance quickly grew less.

St. Louis lost nothing by the change. Many of the cross-continent railroads, following the old pioneer trails, met here. To-day more than twenty-five railroads enter the city, connecting it with the remotest parts of the United States as well as with Canada and Mexico.

St. Louis now has about 700,000 inhabitants and occupies nearly 65 square miles of land, which slopes gradually from the water's edge to the plateau that stretches for miles beyond the western limits of the city. The city is laid out in broad straight streets, crossing each other at right angles wherever possible and numbered north and south from Market Street.

The shopping district lies mainly between Broadway,—the fifth street from the river,—Twelfth Street, Pine Street, and Franklin Avenue. The financial center is on Fourth Street and Broadway, while Washington Avenue, between Fourth and Eighteenth streets, is one of the greatest “wholesale rows” in the West.

Besides its public schools—which include a teachers' college—and private schools, St. Louis has two higher institutions of learning, Washington University and St. Louis University.

Among the most important public buildings in the business section are the municipal court building, the city hall, the courthouse, and the public library.

The St. Louis Union Station, used by all railroads entering the city, is one of the largest and finest stations in the world. Pneumatic tubes connect it with the post office and the customhouse, while underground driveways and passages for handling bulky freight, express, and mail matter radiate from it in all directions.

Almost directly west of the business section, on the outskirts of the city, lies Forest Park, the largest of St. Louis' many recreation grounds. It covers more than thirteen hundred acres of field and forest land, left largely in a natural state. Here is the City Art Museum, which was part of the Art Palace of the world's fair held in St. Louis in 1904 to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase.

The beautiful Missouri Botanical Garden, generally known as Shaw's Garden, is open for the use of the public. Compton Hill Reservoir Park, on the South Side, though small, is one of the finest in the city. Its water tower and basins are a part of the municipal water system, costing more than $30,000,000. The city water is pumped from the Mississippi River and purified as it passes into great settling basins.

Though St. Louis' attractive houses are found almost everywhere outside the strictly business quarters, the real residence section has gradually been growing toward Forest Park, and many of the city's business men have built homes in the suburbs beyond the western limits of the city. One of these suburbs, University City, bids fair to become America's most beautiful residence town.

Unlike most of our large cities, St. Louis has no sharply defined factory district. Its manufacturing establishments are distributed over nearly the whole city. An important part of its manufacturing interests centers on the eastern bank of the Mississippi in the city's Illinois suburbs.

The industrial development of these Illinois suburbs was greatly increased by the opening of the Eads Bridge in 1874. Before this time there had been no bridge connection over the Mississippi. Passengers and freight ferries had plied regularly between St. Louis and her suburbs across the river, but there were seasons when floating ice made the river impassable, sometimes cutting off communication between the two shores for days.

The Eads Bridge is 6220 feet long and is so built that the railroad tracks cross it on a level lower than the carriage drives and foot paths. With its completion, communication between opposite sides of the river became as easy as between different parts of the city.

Other bridges have since been built. In 1890 the Merchants Bridge, used solely by railroads, was built across the Mississippi three miles to the north of Eads Bridge, and now there is the McKinley Bridge between the two. In addition to these the city is building a bridge which, when completed, will be open to traffic without toll charges.

Among the Illinois suburbs thus brought into closer touch with the western side of the river are East St. Louis,—a growing city of about 75,000,—Venice, Madison, Granite City, and Belleville. Being principally manufacturing communities, these cities contribute in no small degree to St. Louis' importance as an industrial center.

St. Louis' importance, however, is mainly due to the city's favorable location at the heart of one of the world's richest river valleys. The vast natural resources of the Middle West are at her command. Raw materials of every kind abound almost at her door. Missouri ranks high as an agricultural and mining state. Its position in the great corn belt makes hog raising a highly profitable industry. The prairies to the north furnish extensive grazing areas for cattle. The Ozark Mountains to the southwest afford excellent pasturage for sheep and yield lumber as well as great quantities of lead, zinc, and other minerals. In addition, the state has large deposits of soft coal, while only the Mississippi separates St. Louis from the unlimited supply of the Illinois coal fields. As a result, the cost of manufacturing is low and the city's many and varied industries thrive. Chief among these is the manufacture of boots and shoes. Though this business is comparatively young in the West, St. Louis already ranks among the three leading footwear-producing cities of the country, turning out over $50,000,000 worth of boots and shoes yearly. Most of these are of the heavier type made for country trade, but the output of finer footwear is steadily increasing.

Next in importance are the tobacco, meat-packing, and malt-liquor industries. St. Louis is one of the leading cities in the country in the manufacture of tobacco. The meat-packing establishments, including those in East St. Louis, hold fourth place among America's great packing centers. Its mammoth breweries lead the country in the output of beer. Flour mills, foundries, and sugar refineries also do an immense business. Street and railroad cars, stoves of all kinds, paints, oils, and white lead are made in scores of factories, while hundreds of other industries flourish in the city, making it one of the greatest workshops in the United States.

Important as St. Louis is as a manufacturing city, it is even more noted as a distributing center, its location making it the natural commercial metropolis of the Mississippi valley. It markets not only its own manufactures but products which represent every section of the country. The vast territory to the west and southwest depends almost entirely on St. Louis for its supply of dry goods and groceries. Other staples are boots and shoes, tobacco, hardware, timber, cotton, breadstuffs, cattle, and hogs.

In the handling of furs St. Louis leads the cities of the world. She also holds a high place among the great grain markets. In this country her annual receipts of corn, wheat, and oats are exceeded only by those of Chicago and Minneapolis. Shipments of grain and breadstuffs to Central and South America, Cuba, Great Britain, and Germany constitute the city's leading exports.

As a live-stock market it is no less important. The National Stockyards, located on the Illinois side of the river, contain several hundred acres. Though packing houses and slaughtering houses occupy some of this land, the main part is covered with sheds, pens, and enclosures for the reception and sale of live animals. Millions of cattle, hogs, and sheep are handled here every year. St. Louis also buys and sells hundreds of thousands of horses and mules, being the largest market for draft animals in the world.

Just as the frontier trading post of the eighteenth century grew into the thriving river port of the nineteenth, so the river port of the nineteenth century has developed into one of the leading railroad and commercial centers of the twentieth. And the fourth city of America in size is now St. Louis.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND STUDY

1. Why did Jefferson buy the country included in the Louisiana Purchase?

2. Give a brief account of the Louisiana Purchase; from whom purchased, the cost, the territory included.

3. Tell what you know of St. Louis before the Louisiana Purchase.

4. What brought about the sudden and rapid growth of St. Louis after the purchase?

5. What effect did the railroads have upon St. Louis' water transportation? Why?

6. Describe the St. Louis Union Station.

7. What three bridges were built across the Mississippi at St. Louis, and why?

8. To what does St. Louis owe her importance as an industrial center?

9. In what lines does St. Louis lead the world?

10. Name some of the products sent to St. Louis from the neighboring country.

11. What are some of her most important industries?

12. Name some of the things which St. Louis supplies to other sections of the country.

13. In what business has St. Louis held an important place from its beginning?

14. By consulting a map, find what great railroad systems run to St. Louis.

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