9/19/18 Wednesday: Today I had on our agenda to go to St Louis. We had a relaxed morning, with French toast for breakfast. Around noon, we took off for an adventure in the city. I planned a driving route that would take us right to a reasonably priced parking lot from which we could easily walk to the Gateway Arch. It worked perfectly.
We walked through a nice park toward the south base of the arch. It said Exit only. So we went to the north base of the arch. It also said Exit only. What the heck?! How do we get in? And then – look at how big this thing is! Those are actually for-real full-size people walking by, and they are tiny!
We were on the river side of the arch, and we finally figured out that the entrance is underground, under the arch, on the city side. Ah ha! This is looking toward the river, through the arch, with our backs to the city.
I had read that this is part of the National Park Service, so I brought our annual pass. The bad news is that our pass was expired. The good news is that Kenny is officially old enough to buy a lifeline senior pass! So that’s what we did, which reduced our price for our ride up the arch! Yes! We did! We went to the top of the arch!
We spent about 20 minutes walking around the museum exhibits before our scheduled time to go up in the arch. The museum was very interesting! And then – here we are, lined up to get into our egg pod. We were going to be in the bottom pod.
This is the hatch that opens for us to get into our five person egg. There are eight eggs that go up a track like a little train to the top of the arch. This is not an adventure for the claustrophobic or for very large persons! The egg pod is small, and the door is even smaller!
We had four people in our egg going up the track. You can watch out the door windows and see all of the infrastructure as you go. It was a little jostly, but the other lady in our pod kept talking to me and that kept me distracted. YAY! Our iron worker son would have loved this – watching all of the infrastructure going by!
We made it to the top— 630 feet in the air, on a two legged structure. WHAT?! It is the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere. It was built in 1963-1965, is stainless steel on the outside, carbon steel on the inside, and concrete in the middle.
This is at the very top of the arch! Yes, the floor is curved, and the floor is only about six feet across. There are windows that are 7” by 27” to look out. It is not a very big area.
Here was our view of the city.
To the left was the St Louis Cardinals MLB Baseball stadium.
To the right was the FORMER St Louis Rams NFL Football stadium. The white stripe on the roof is where is USED to say RAMS.
And on the other side was the mighty Mississippi.
Here is where we had to take some stairs down to reboard the egg-pod to take us back down to ground level. A big rain squall came through while we were up at the top. I’m just glad the wind wasn’t blowing!
We got back to ground level safely, and decided to spend some more time in the museum since it was rainy outside. Kenny wasn’t feeling great – he really got scrunched up in the egg-pod coming down, and his morning French toast wasn’t happy. So we hung out for awhile. There was a movie available for an additional charge, which was all about the construction of the arch. We opted not to watch it since we just missed it and the timing for the next showing wasn’t working for us. However, there was a huge brand new museum underground that had all kinds of great displays and information, so we spent more time exploring it. This is a picture showing the size of the arch in comparison with other well-known monuments.
There were six display areas. One of them was about the building of the arch. You engineerically inclined brainiacs would have loved this part.
There was a section about colonial St. Louis, which was founded in 1764 and was pivotal in the fur trade with the native Americans, particularly the Osages. Another section described westward expansion and the new frontier. The Gateway Arch was constructed as a monument to commemorate the role of St Louis in the westward expansion of the United States. It was the western-most central city for launching into western exploration. It is located near the confluence of the nation’s two longest rivers – the Missouri and the Mississippi, and was one of the nation’s busiest pre-civil war ports. They had quite a large interactive museum, which was just opened this year in 2018. Very worthwhile to spend time here!
This is a great way to learn history – so much better than a text book! I liked this particular wagon. Check out the wooden wheel with the iron ‘tire’. This wagon was amazing.
The rain was done, and the ground was already drying – in the 90+ degree heat. Oh boy! So we headed outside to see a couple more things. This arch really is impressive. It is so huge that it is very hard to grasp the actual size of it in a picture!
We walked over to the 1834 Old Cathedral. It is usually open, but was not open today. 🙁 The present building is the fourth church to be erected on the site. Construction began in 1831 and the church was dedicated in 1834.
The only building to be saved and its land not claimed for the Gateway park, was the Parish of St. Louis, the Old Cathedral. The entire park commemorates Thomas Jefferson and the pioneers who broke open the American West. The Old Cathedral sits on the grounds of the memorial park as a reminder of the expansion of all faiths throughout these territories and the people whose lives were lived as witness to their spiritual values in Colonial America. For that, Pope John XXIII designated the Old Cathedral as the “Basilica of Saint Louis, The King” in 1961. A historically significant sacred space by papal decree. I was bummed that it was locked. It is the oldest building in the City of St. Louis and the only building that remains in the hands of its original owner, the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Our next place to visit was the Old Courthouse, built in 1839. It was the setting for the pivotal Scott case in the 1840’s, when enslaved Dred and Harriet Scott sued for their own freedom. The case was first heard here in 1846, and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857. Even though they lived as slaves in the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin for extended periods of time, the courts did not free them under the doctrine of “once free, always free”. The U.S. Supreme Court found that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed property rights to citizens of the United States. They said that slaves were considered property, and they were of African descent, so they were not U.S. Citizens. The courts did not free them. The same year, their owner transferred ownership of the Scott family to a man who did free them, right here, back in the St. Louis Old Courthouse in 1857. Mr Scott died a free man one year later. The case was so critical that it was like a bonfire that helped ignite the civil war.
Another significant trial started as a lawsuit here that also went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding womens right to vote. Mrs. Virginia Minor argued that citizenship and voting rights where guaranteed by the Constitution and extended to women. The local court decided against Mrs. Minor. The court system, and finally the Supreme Court all upheld the right for individual states to decide who could vote within their borders, thereby denying her the right to vote. These two cases pushed our nation to define citizenship and civil rights for all people. Slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment in 1865, and women were given the right to vote in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. It all started here in St Louis.
The building, nearly 200 years old, is impressive and the current dome wasn’t actually completed until 1862.
A life size statue recognizing the significance of the Scotts.
The inside, looking up at the rotunda dome.
This was one of the courtrooms. The round banister surrounding the court floor is original from the 1800’s.
Another remarkable engineering feature of the building was the spiral staircase that had no center support pillar, but is embedded in the walls. There was much cast iron in the construction of the stairway, which was prevalent in construction during this era in St. Louis.
After touring through these icons of St Louis, I had planned that we should go eat lunch at a famous BBQ spot. After all, St. Louis is famous for BBQ ribs, right!? Yes, really!! The place I wanted to go was just one of those kind where you stand in line and order what you want, and it comes out in a styrofoam sectioned plate: meat and a couple of sides. These are usually the best kind of places for BBQ! Unfortunately, Kenny still wasn’t feeling very good and couldn’t fathom eating anything, so we skipped the walk to Sugarfire Smokehouse. 😔
Here’s more history trivia for you: St. Louis-style spare ribs are cut in a particular way with the sternum bone, cartilage and the rib tips removed so that a well-formed, rectangular-shaped rack is created for presentation. This cut of ribs was formalized by the USDA as “Pork Ribs, St. Louis Style,” And, the ribs are often heavily sauced; St. Louis is said to consume more barbecue sauce per capita than any other city in the nation. St. Louis-style barbecue sauce is described as a “very sweet, slightly acidic, sticky, tomato-based barbecue sauce usually made without liquid smoke.” Our kind of sauce!
We also did not make it to a couple of top tier breweries that our youngest son really wanted us to go check out. He wanted us to buy him some special craft bottled goodness to take back to Washington at Christmas time. St Louis has a very long history of brewing beer, and a German immigrant to St. Louis is credited with the first introduction of lager beer to the country in the early 1800’s. Apparently the natural cave system under the city provided the perfect temperature for aging beer. Of course, this is where Anheuser-Busch originated, and Budweiser was introduced in 1876, which was the most popular beer in America. Everywhere I look, there is more history trivia for you!
We headed back to the marina, and chilled out – literally – in the A/C. My, oh my, this 90+ degree weather is crazy!! I was bummed that Kenny didn’t feel good, and he was bummed that he put a damper on the day. Oh well- we saw some cool stuff, and I learned more history as I write this! St Louis has some great history!
Not everyday goes as planned, and that’s just part of the adventure. Every day has it’s own awesomeness!