A Patriotic Family Road Trip in Missouri

Missouri State Capitol

Jefferson City, MO

Jefferson City's 1917 capitol, its interior filled with Thomas Hart Benton murals depicting the state's frontier history.

First Missouri State Capitol

St. Charles, MO

The rooms above a store on Main Street where Missouri's first legislature met from 1821 to 1826.

Gateway Arch

St. Louis, MO

The tallest monument in the United States at 630 feet, built in St. Louis to honor America's westward expansion.

Harry S. Truman Presidential Library

Independence, MO

The library and grave of the haberdasher who ended the war and rebuilt Europe.

Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site

St. Louis, MO

White Haven, the family farm where Grant courted and married Julia Dent and lived in the 1850s before the war made him a general.

Harry S Truman National Historic Site

Independence, MO

The Truman family home, left as it was when Harry and Bess lived there, the "Summer White House" of 1945–53.

Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum

Hannibal, MO

The Mississippi river town Twain turned into St. Petersburg for Tom Sawyer.

Old Courthouse

St. Louis, MO

The 1828–1864 courthouse beneath the Gateway Arch where Dred and Harriet Scott first sued for their freedom in 1847 and won in 1850, before the Supreme Court took it away.

Scott Joplin House State Historic Site

St. Louis, MO

The flat where Scott Joplin lived from 1901 to 1903 and composed some of his best-known ragtime, with a player piano in the parlor.

Historic Daniel Boone Home

Defiance, MO

The stone house where frontiersman Daniel Boone spent his last years and died in 1820.

Jesse James Birthplace and Museum

Kearney, MO

The farm where outlaw Jesse James was born in 1847, with the family home and his original grave site.

Kansas City Union Station

Kansas City, MO

A grand rail station opened in 1914, once one of the busiest in the country, restored and reopened in 1999.

Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery

St. Louis, MO

One of the oldest national cemeteries, on the grounds of an Army post founded in 1826 above the Mississippi.

Missouri History Museum

St. Louis, MO

The state history museum in Forest Park, in a memorial to Thomas Jefferson built with proceeds of the 1904 World's Fair.

National Museum of Transportation

Kirkwood, MO

A collection of locomotives, cars and aircraft, including a Union Pacific "Big Boy," among the largest steam locomotives ever built.

National Frontier Trails Museum

Independence, MO

A museum where the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails began, built around the diaries of the people who walked them.

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

Kansas City, MO

A museum in the 18th & Vine district, where the Negro National League was founded in 1920.

Arabia Steamboat Museum

Kansas City, MO

The cargo of a steamboat that sank in the Missouri in 1856, dug from a cornfield in 1988 nearly perfectly preserved.

Soldiers Memorial Military Museum

St. Louis, MO

A 1930s memorial to St. Louisans who died in World War I, reopened in 2018 as a museum of the region's military history.

National WWI Museum and Memorial

Kansas City, MO

The Liberty Memorial, dedicated in 1926, and the museum Congress designated as the nation's official World War I museum.

Fort Osage National Historic Landmark

Sibley, MO

A reconstruction of the 1808 fort and trading post that William Clark chose as a site on the Lewis and Clark journey.

Anheuser-Busch Brewery

St. Louis, MO

A brewery complex in Soulard whose Victorian brewhouse and Clydesdale stables are a National Historic Landmark.

Westport Battlefield

Kansas City, MO

Loose Park and the markers of the October 1864 Battle of Westport, one of the largest Civil War battles west of the Mississippi.