The Gateway Arch, the best-known and most visible landmark in St. Louis, is the tallest man-made monument in the United States. Ride to the 630-foot apex of the Arch on the Journey to the Top tram for panoramic views over the city and the Mississippi River. The Gateway Arch is the centerpiece of the Core of Discovery district, which also includes Eads Bridge, another National Historic Landmark. The steel bridge, built in 1874, was the first road and rail bridge across the Mississippi River. The Anheuser-Busch Brewery offers free tours showcasing its original brick buildings, the brewing process and stables that still house the brand’s celebrated Clydesdales.
Two national historic landmarks in Missouri are directly connected to the Lewis and Clark Expedition: Fort Osage in Sibley, a trade house and military garrison established in 1808 by William Clark, where you can take a tour led by an authentically outfitted guide, and Arrow Rock, a village built on a bluff that was mentioned in Lewis and Clark’s records of crossing the Missouri River, as well as those of other explorers. A ferry service across the river was later established at Arrow Rock, making it an important trading hub along the Santa Fe Trail.
Missouri was the birthplace and home to an impressive number of important historical figures, some of whose homes are national historic landmarks. Among them are author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote her beloved “Little House on the Prairie” in a Mansfield home now open to visitors, and World War II General John J. Pershing, who spent his childhood in a nine-room home in Laclede and later attained the highest ever rank in the United States Army. Mark Twain’s boyhood home overlooking the Mississippi River in Hannibal is also open to the public. Two presidential landmarks welcome Missouri visitors: White Haven, the 1850s home of President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, now the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, and the Truman Family Farm in Grandview, now the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site.
Notable National Natural Landmarks in Missouri include Big Oak Tree State Park, an undisturbed landscape of tall oak and hickory forests and wetlands, and Grand Gulf State Park, a collapsed cave system in the Ozarks with a natural bridge spanning a 250-foot wide, 130-foot deep and mile-long gulf. Cameron Cave, part of the privately owned Mark Twain Cave Complex, was discovered in 1925 and is open for tours along its labyrinthine channels in summer. Marvel Cave in Branson, one of the deepest caves in Missouri, has been explored by tourists since 1894. It’s now beneath the Silver Dollar City Theme Park, which offers regular guided tours of the cave. Onondaga Cave State Park also allows walking tours of its underwater landscape of massive stalagmites, stalactites formed by a still-flowing river.
