Missouri Scavenger Hunt
Missouri has always been a state that defies easy classification—part Midwestern breadbasket, part Southern outpost, part Western launchpad. Straddling the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, it has long been a conduit for people, ideas, and ambition flowing both ways across the continent. If history is a crossroads, then Missouri is a roundabout with multiple exits.
It was from here that settlers pushed westward in covered wagons, guided by trailheads in Independence and Westport. The state’s soil has given rise to riverboats, railroads, jazz, barbecue, modern flight, and Mid-Century dreams of the atomic age. Yet its deepest stories reside not just in the great arcs of Manifest Destiny and Civil War but in the small-town murals of post offices, the cobblestone nostalgia of Route 66 motor courts, and the neon flicker of drive-in marquees.
Missouri is a state of strong contrasts and slow reconciliations: of German immigrants raising sturdy barns in wine country, of political bosses building concrete legacies in Kansas City, of Frank Lloyd Wright’s minimalist utopias alongside Googie-style gas stations shaped like flying saucers. Here, a chess king stands fourteen feet tall, barbecue smoke earns cult status, and art deco towers light up the sky with ambition from eras past.
If you want to understand America’s past through its ambitions, contradictions, and reinventions—well, as the saying goes: Missouri will show you.
The photos and stories collected here are a fast and fun way to learn the explanations behind the quirks, the traditions and the secrets that make Missouri uniquely Missouri. How did Route 66 get its name? Solved. What was the first building the State of Missouri ever spent money to preserve? A mystery no more. What caused so many Germans to come to the Missouri Rhineland? Identified. Where was the first railroad bridge across the Missouri River? Revealed.
Missouri’s peak offers no vista at all, But the tower nearby lets your vision stand tall. Once scouts of the forest watched fires in fright, Now visitors climb just to capture the sight.
A column tall in steel and stone, Where Louis Sullivan carved his throne. The shaft, the base, the leafy frieze— A skyscraper in temple’s ease. The brewer fled, the architect fell— But still this tower casts its spell.
A nine-story hub where the hoofbeats rang loud, In a kingdom of cattle, efficient and proud. Now artists and diners mill through the crowd.
When Twain stirred his cup and drank with a grin, He joked at the water’s bold, muddy din. But a massive new system changed the tone, With filters that made the murk well-known. Clean water now flows where once it did scare— A triumph of treatment built with great care.
“Radio in every room,” said the neon glow, Where Gable may've stayed on his way to a show. A slice of the '40s, restored in fine grace, Still shines for the road in its streamlined space.
Struck by lightning, again it fell, A dome ablaze with a marble shell. Yet voters said “Stay!” and poured in the cash For a temple of state both stately and brash. With columns and carvings and floors of stone— This Capitol proves Jeff City’s own.