Missouri Vacation Guide System

Missouri History

The history of Missouri begins with France claiming the territory and selling it to the U.S. in 1803. Statehood came following a compromise in 1820. Missouri grew rapidly until the Civil War, which saw numerous small battles and control by the Union. Its economy has become diverse and complex, and the state ranks in the middle of many economic and social indicators.

17th century

In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi River in canoes along the area that would later become Missouri. The two established that the Mississippi River ran all the way to the sea. In 1682, Robert de LaSalle claimed the Louisiana Territory for France. The earliest recorded form of "Missouri" is found on a map drawn by Marquette after his 1673 journey.

From this time up until the building of the first railways in the Mississippi Basin in the mid-19th century, the Mississippi-Missouri river system waterways were the main means of communication and transportation in the region. During the early years of French occupation, trade with the American Indians was the only industry. It was carried on using birch canoes and pirogues. The fur trade grew to be a major part of the early Missouri economy.
18th century

By 1720, immigrants were settling in New France by the hundreds coming both by way of the Great Lakes and the mouth of the Mississippi. In the Illinois Country, they settled first on the east side of the Mississippi, making the villages of Kaskaskia, Fort de Chartres and Prairie du Rocher. To meet the demands of rapidly expanding commerce, the French and English colonists introduced barges and keelboats on the rivers. In the same year, the Frenchman Phillippe François Renault, based east of the Mississippi River, brought the first black slaves to Missouri to work in lead mining part of the year.

Etienne de Bourgmont built Fort Orleans in 1724 along the north bank of the Missouri River in what is now Carroll County, Missouri.

In 1750, Ste. Genevieve was founded on the Mississippi, the first permanent European settlement in the future state. King Louis XV issued the Code Noir (Black Code), a set of regulations concerning the use of enslaved Africans in the territory. It had certain protections for what was considered an economic investment.

Spain gained control of the region in 1762 under the Treaty of Fontainebleau after the British defeated France in the Seven Years War, known as the French and Indian War in North America. It did not assume control until 1770. The agricultural settlements changed little, and continued the use of French in most transactions. The Spanish regime continued most of the Code Noir, but also permitted enslaved blacks to work on their own account and purchase their freedom.

St. Louis was founded in 1764 by the Frenchman Pierre Laclède Liguest.
19th century
Population Growth during the 1800s
1810     20,845
1820     66,586
1830     140,455
1840     383,702
1850     682,044
1860     1,182,012
1870     1,721,295
1880     2,168,380
1890     2,679,184
Louisiana Territory
Main article: Louisiana Purchase

Spain, in 1800, negotiated the territory's cession back to France. The French ruler, Napoleon, reasoned that the territory could not be protected from the expanding United States. He then sold it to the U.S. under President Thomas Jefferson for $15 million in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition set out in 1804 to map the region and in 1805, the Louisiana Territory was organized, with the government seat in St. Louis. The U.S. government soon built trading and military forts to establish control over the territory, Fort Bellefontaine was made an Army post near St. Louis in 1804, and Fort Osage was built along the Missouri River in 1808.

The Mississippi-Ohio river systems were navigated by steamboat starting in 1811 with the New Orleans steamboat travelling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to New Orleans. On December 16 of that year, the first of a series known as the New Madrid earthquakes occurred, the largest in the history of the United States. Tremors were reported as far away as Philadelphia.
Missouri Territory

After Louisiana became a state in 1812, the remaining Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory. That year, the first general assembly of the Missouri Territory was created, with the five original counties being Cape Girardeau, New Madrid, Saint Charles, Saint Louis, and Ste. Genevieve.

Southerners poured into Missouri Territory during 1804-21. The rapid population growth was facilitated by treaties that extinguished Indian land titles, with settlers attracted by the abundance of high quality inexpensive land, and the easy access provided by the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. By 1810 European Americans dominated the population, demographically, and financially. They overwhelmed the small French-speaking element and sent Native Americans to lands further west. Land in the public domain was quickly surveyed and sold to yeoman farmers, whose hard work was rapidly rewarded. Ranchers raised cattle; the Missouri woodland had ample grass for natural grazing. European Americans in early Missouri laid the groundwork for the new state, and their stamp remains strong in the landscape into the 21st century.

Missouri was at the western frontier during the War of 1812, and the main regional headquarters of the U.S. Army was based at Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis. Other forts included Fort Cap au Gris; Fort Osage was abandoned at the start of the war. Several skirmishes were fought in Missouri, including the Battle of the Sink Hole, one of the last battles of the war, on May 24, 1815.

In 1817, the first steamboat reached Saint Louis. That year, the commerce from New Orleans to the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville was carried in barges and keel-boats having a capacity of 60 to 80 tons each, with 3 to 4 months required to make a single trip. In 1820 steamboats were making the same trip in 15 to 20 days, by 1838 in 6 days or less. By 1834 there were 230 steamboats, having an aggregate tonnage of 39,000 tons, engaged in trade on the Mississippi. Large numbers of flat boats, especially from the Ohio and its tributaries, continued to carry produce downstream. In 1842 Ohio completed an extensive canal system that connected the Mississippi with the Great Lakes. These were in turn connected in 1825 by the Erie Canal with the Hudson River and the Port of New York on the Atlantic Ocean. There was expansive growth of resource commodity, and agricultural products trade throughout the rivers and Great Lakes network.

In 1818, Saint Louis University was founded, a Catholic Jesuit Seminary that was the first college west of the Mississippi River. It expanded its programs to include secular instruction.
Missouri Compromise
Main article: Missouri Compromise

Also in 1818, Missouri requested admittance to the Union as a slave state. This became a national controversy due to the delicate balance between free and slave states. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise cleared the way for Missouri's entry to the union as a slave state, along with Maine, a free state, to preserve the balance. Additionally, the Missouri Compromise stated that the remaining portion of the Louisiana Territory above the 36°30? line was to be free from slavery. This same year, the first Missouri constitution was adopted. The following year, 1821, Missouri was admitted as the 24th state, with the state capital temporarily located in Saint Charles until a permanent capital could be built. Missouri was the first state entirely west of the Mississippi River to be admitted to the Union. The state capital moved to Jefferson City in 1826.
Rapid growth

Before the steamboat was successfully used on the Mississippi, the population of the valley did not reach 2,000,000. The population increased rapidly from approximately 2,500,000 in 1820 to more than 6,000,000 in 1840, and to 14,000,000 or more in 1860. The well-equipped passenger boats of the period immediately preceding the Civil War were notable features on the Ohio and the Lower Mississippi.
Slavery

Rich planters from Kentucky and Tennessee moved into the bottomland of "Little Dixie" region in the central part of the state. They bought up large tracts of fertile land, and brought in slaves to do the work of growing hemp (for rope making) and tobacco, traditional crops of the Upper South. Slaves were expensive, with the average price of $700 in 1860, the equivalent of three or four years' pay for a free worker. In most of the state, slavery was unprofitable, and in 7/8 of the counties, farmers had no slaves.

In 1824, the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled that free blacks could not be re-enslaved, a principle known as "once free, always free." In 1846, the Dred Scott v. Sandford case began. Dred and Harriet Scott, who were slaves, sued for freedom in state courts. This was on the premise that they had previously lived in a free state. This case continued until 1857, culminating in a landmark United States Supreme Court decision rejecting Scott's arguments and sustaining slavery. In 1860, 3600 free blacks lived in Missouri.

The proportion of slaves in the state population peaked at 18 percent in 1830; by 1860 the proportion was 9.8 percent in 1860, following heavy Irish and German immigration from the 1840s, as well as continued migration from the eastern United States. In St. Louis, nine percent of the 14,000 residents in 1840 were slaves, and only one percent of the 57,000 residents in 1860, Although few Missouri families owned slaves, many whites of southern origin thought that slavery was basically a good idea, and that freeing the slaves would be a calamity for the white population. The state officially abolished slavery in January 1865 when the governor signed the Ordinance of Emancipation.
Platte Purchase
Main article: Platte Purchase

At the time of its admission, the western border of Missouri was a straight line from Iowa to Arkansas based on the confluence of the Kaw River with the Missouri River in the Kansas City West Bottoms. Land in what is now northwest Missouri was deeded to the Iowa (tribe) and the combined Sac (tribe) and Fox (tribe). Following encroachments on the land by white settlers—most notably Joseph Robidoux -- William Clark persuaded the tribes to agree give up their land in exchange for $7,500 in the 1836 Platte Purchase. The land was ratified by Congress in 1837. The purchase received widespread support from Southern Congressmen since it would mean adding territory to the only slave state north of Missouri's southern border. An area only somewhat smaller than the combined area of Rhode Island and Delaware was added to Missouri. It consisted of the Andrew, Atchison, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway and Platte counties.
Gateway to the West

The University of Missouri was created in 1839. Six years later, St. Louis was connected by telegraph to the east coast. The same year, the first bank west of the Mississippi was established. The business leadership of St. Louis consisted primarily of Yankees from East, along with some Southerners. Much of the working class, especially the craftsman, were German immigrants.

After the California Gold Rush began in 1848, Saint Louis, Independence, Westport and especially Saint Joseph became departure points for those joining wagon trains to the West. They bought supplies and outfits in these cities to make the six-month overland trek to California, earning Missouri the nickname "Gateway to the West". This is memorialized by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and its associated museum.

In 1848, Kansas City was incorporated on the banks of the Missouri River. In 1860, the Pony Express began its short-lived run from Saint Joseph to Sacramento, California.
Farming

In the 1820s, northeastern Missouri saw a large influx of farmers, especially from the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. They introduced the upper South agricultural-economic pattern, with its mix of hog and corn production practiced by small-scale farmers and cattle and tobacco production practiced by large-scale farmers. Families typically moved to the region not as solitary units but as elements of large kin-based networks that maintained geographic integrity by purchasing clustered tracts of land.

Missouri was nationally famous for the quality and quantity of its mules. The state produced a superior breed from Mexican and Eastern stock. Some were used on the western trails, and a larger number were used on southern plantations. The industry provided a full-time livelihood for a few traders, feeders and breeders, but it supplemented the income for a far larger number of farmers. Horses, which are larger and more expensive to maintain, but which can do more work, remained the favorite animal on Missouri farms.
Mormons and the 'Mormon War'
Main article: Mormon War (1838)

Joseph Smith, Jr., the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, claimed to have received revelation that western Missouri, specifically the area around Independence, and other areas of western Missouri, were to become Zion and a place of gathering. By the early 1830s, Mormons came into the area, at first to Independence and its nearby environs. The neighbors refused to tolerate the newcomers because the Mormons would vote in blocks and congregate in concentrated areas, and would typically trade only amongst themselves, and they would not hold slaves. Open claims by the Mormons that the area was given to them by God only worsened the situation. By the mid 1830s, Mormons had effectively been driven from the Independence area, but they relocated to counties north and a little east. By 1838, open hostility was peaking again. Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, which encouraged Missourians to expel Mormons by all means possible or exterminate them if they would not leave. Skirmishes and small battles occurred and a number of people were killed, mostly Mormons. Joseph Smith, Jr., was jailed, along with other LDS leaders and held in several jails for more than five months, with no hope of a trial or court hearing. Smith was allowed to escape and he and his church moved to Illinois to form the city of Nauvoo in 1839. Missouri still holds many important sites still considered significant by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ. In 1976 Missouri officially revoked the extermination order.
Civil War
Main article: Missouri in the Civil War

In the 1860 presidential election, the state voted for Northern Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. When war broke out in April 1861 sympathies ran for both sides, the Confederacy and the Union, and it was in Saint Louis where the first blood was spilled in the "Camp Jackson Affair". Union military forces quickly seized control of all strategic points and drove the Confederate government into exile.

The majority of St. Louis business leaders supported the Union and rejected efforts by Confederate sympathizers to take control of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce in January 1862. Federal authorities intervened in this struggle but the conflict splintered the Chamber of Commerce into two organizations. The pro-Unionists finally gained the ascendancy and St. Louis became a major supply base for the Union forces in the entire Mississippi Valley.

In 1861, Union General John C. Fremont issued a proclamation that freed slaves who had been owned by those that had taken up arms against the Union. Lincoln immediately reversed this unauthorized action. Secessionists tried to form their own state government, joining the Confederacy and establishing a Confederate government in exile first in Neosho, Missouri and later in Texas (at Marshall, Texas). By the end of the war, Missouri had supplied 110,000 troops for the Union Army and 40,000 troops for the Confederate Army.


Because of the state's strategic location linking Northern and Southern states, many important Civil War battles occurred in Missouri. Missouri was the location of the third largest number of engagements of any state, after Virginia and Tennessee. The pro-Southern state force known as the Missouri State Guard commanded by Sterling Price initiated a long retreat from Boonville to the Southwestern portion of the state in 1861. In Carthage, the Guard defeated a heavy detachment of Federal regulars commanded by Col. Franz Sigel. Shortly afterward, the 12,000-man force of the combined elements of the Missouri State Guard, Arkansas State Guard, and Confederate regulars soundly defeated the Federal army of Nathaniel Lyon at Wilson's Creek or "Oak Hills".

Following the success at Wilson's Creek, southern forces pushed northward and captured the 3500-strong garrison at the first Battle of Lexington. Federal forces contrived to campaign to retake Missouri, causing the Southern forces to retreat from the state and head for Arkansas and later Mississippi.

In Arkansas, the Missourians fought at the battle of Pea Ridge, meeting defeat. In Mississippi, elements of the Missouri State Guard participated in the struggles at Corinth and Iuka, where they suffered heavy losses.
Price's Raid in the Western Theater, 1864

In 1864, Sterling Price plotted to liberate Missouri, launching his 1864 raid on the state. Striking in the southeastern portion of the state, Price moved north, and attempted to capture Fort Davidson but failed. Next, Price sought to attack St. Louis but found it too heavily fortified. He then broke west in a parallel course with the Missouri River. The Federals attempted to retard Price's advance through both minor and substantial skirmishing such as at Glasgow and Lexington. Price made his way to the extreme western portion of the state, taking part in a series of bitter battles at the Little Blue, Independence, and Byram's Ford. His Missouri campaign culminated in the battle of Westport in which over 30,000 troops fought, leading to the defeat of the Southern army. The Missourians retreated through Kansas and Oklahoma into Arkansas, where they stayed for the remainder of the war. In 1865, Missouri abolished slavery, doing so before the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, by an ordinance of immediate emancipation. Missouri adopted a new constitution, one that denied voting rights and had prohibitions against certain occupations for former Confederacy supporters.
Guerrilla warfare

Besides organized military conflict, Missouri was beset by guerrilla warfare. In such a bitterly divided state, neighbors frequently used the excuse of war to settle personal grudges and took up arms against neighbors. Roving insurgent bands such as Quantrill's Raiders and the men of Bloody Bill Anderson terrorized the countryside, striking both military installations and civilian settlements. Because of the widespread guerrilla conflict, and support by citizens in border counties, Federal leaders issued General Order No. 11 in 1863, and evacuated areas of Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties. They forced the residents out to reduce support for the guerrillas. Union cavalry could sweep through and track down Confederate guerrillas, who no longer had places to hide and people and infrastructure to support them. On short notice, the army forced almost 20,000 people, mostly women, children, and the elderly, to leave their homes. Many never returned, and the affected counties were economically devastated for years after the end of the war. Families passed stories of their bitter experiences down through several generations.

Western Missouri was the scene of brutal guerrilla warfare during the Civil War, and some marauding units became organized criminal gangs after the war. In 1882, the bank robber and ex-Confederate guerrilla Jesse James was killed in Saint Joseph. Vigilante groups appeared in remote areas where law enforcement was weak, to deal with the lawlessness left over from the guerrilla warfare phase. For example, the Bald Knobbers were the term for several law-and-order vigilante groups in the Ozarks. In some cases, they too turned to illegal gang activity.
Late 19th century

Missouri adopted its third state constitution on October 30, 1875.

During the Civil War, the Federal government closed the Mississippi to commerce. When the war was over, the prosperity of the South was temporarily ruined. Hundreds of steamboats had been destroyed. Moreover, much of the commerce of the West had been turned from New Orleans, via the Mississippi, to the Atlantic seaboard, via the Great Lakes and by the rapidly multiplying new lines of railways connecting through Chicago. Some revival of commerce on the Mississippi took place following the war, but this was checked by a sandbar at the mouth of the south-west pass in its delta on the Gulf of Mexico. Ead's jetties created a new shipping passage at the mouth of the south pass in 1879, but the facilities for the transfer of freight in New Orleans were far inferior to those employed by the railways, and the steamboat companies did not prosper.

Up to the 1880s the six southeastern counties of Missouri's Bootheel, swampy and subject to flooding, remained heavily forested, underdeveloped, and underpopulated. Beginning in the 1880s, railroads opened up the Bootheel to logging. In 1905, the Little River Drainage District constructed an elaborate system of ditches, canals, and levees to drain swampland. As a result, population more than tripled from 1880 to 1930, and cotton cultivation flourished. By 1920 it was the chief crop, attracting newcomers to the farms from Arkansas and Tennessee.

In the 1930s of the Great Depression, banks and insurance companies had taken over ownership of much foreclosed farmland in the region. They arranged rentals to tenant farmers, who in turn hired their sharecroppers for labor. The tenant-sharecropper system began before the Great Depression, but by 1938, there was increasing mechanization on farms. This shift allowed a single farmer to work more land, putting the sharecroppers out of work. Left-wing elements from the local Socialist movement, and from St. Louis, moved in to organize the sharecroppers into the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. They had a highly visible, violent confrontation with state authorities in 1939.

Before 1870 the original Ozark settlers in the southwest part of the state were part-time farmers, herders and hunters. During 1870-1900 the region became one of general full-time small farm operations, with diverse crops and livestock. Hunting and fishing became leisure activities, rather than a necessity for subsistence. After 1900 commercial agriculture increased and livestock production surpassed cultivation. The general farm of yore vanished.

Only dairy farming survived the pressure of livestock production. By the 1970s, however, agriculture in the Ozarks had come full circle. Many modern farmers survived only by becoming part-time farmers. Much of the population commutes to paid employment for most of their income, in much the same way as the pioneers had been forced to diversify their efforts.
Women on the frontier
Gender roles and ethnicity

In the early nineteenth century, Missouri had two divergent family styles - the French and the American. The French placed the mother at the head of the house; the Americans treated the mother as little more than a fellow-worker who often took second place to the men in the family.

Most of the immigration to Missouri in the nineteenth century was of families, and women left diaries, letters, and memoirs documenting preparations for the journey, the nerve-wracking Atlantic crossing, and the long train rides from New York City to St. Louis and their final destinations. Most came from Germany, as well as Ireland, Bohemia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe. The largest groups were Catholic, Lutheran, and German. Once arrived, the women—mostly in their twenties—coped with the problems of daily life in an unfamiliar and occasionally hostile environment, with a limited network of kinfolk available to help.

The normative standard for German American women was to be good, diligent, submissive, and silent housewives. The historical records show more variety, with many being cantankerous, complaining, and unwilling to subordinate themselves. Some were dirty and lazy, and completely unlike the hausfrau stereotype. These nonconformists exerted a greater influence on the community scene than they could by strict conformity to generally accepted behavior.

Throughout the century, most rural families lived traditional lifestyles, based on male dominance. Efforts to modernize rural life, and upgrade the status of women, were reflected in numerous movements, including women's church activities, temperance reform, and the campaign for woman suffrage. Reformers sought to modernize the rural home by transforming its women from producers to consumers. The Missouri Women Farmers' Club (MWFC) and its management was especially active.
Occupations

The great majority of women were full-time homemakers, whose labor created materials and clothing, food, agriculture and basics of life for their families. After the Civil War some women became wage earners in industrializing cities. It was common for widows to operate boardinghouses or small shops; younger women worked in tobacco, shoe, and clothing factories.

Some women helped their husbands publish local newspapers, which flourished in every county seat and small city. In 1876, women began to attend the Missouri Press Association's meetings; by 1896 the women formed their own press association, and at the end of the century, women were editing or publishing 25 newspapers in Missouri. They were especially active in developing features to entertain their women readers, and to help women with their housework and child-rearing.

In highly traditional, remote parts of the Ozark Mountains, there was little demand for modern medicine. Childbirth, aches, pains and broken bones were handled by local practitioners of folk medicine, most of whom were women. Their herbs, salves and other remedies often healed sick people, but their methods relied especially on recognizing and ministering to their patients' psychological, spiritual, and physical needs.
Prostitution

Before the war, the police and municipal judges used their powers to regulate rather than eliminate the sex trades. In antebellum St. Louis, prostitutes working in orderly, discreet brothels were seldom arrested or harassed - unless they were unusually boisterous, engaged in sexual activities outside of their established district, or violated other rules of appropriate conduct. In 1861, St. Louis passed a vagrancy ordinance, criminalizing any woman who walked on the streets after sunset. In 1871, the city passed a law forbidding women from working in bars and saloons, even if the women were owners. These laws were meant to keep prostitution at a minimum but adversely affected women who were legitimately employed.
Education

Middle-class women demanded entry into higher education, and the state colleges reluctantly admitted them. Culver-Stockton College opened in the 1850s as a coeducational school, the first west of the Mississippi. Women were first admitted to the normal school of Missouri State University at Columbia in 1868, but they had second-class status. They were shunted into a few narrow academic programs, restricted in their use of the library, separated from the men, and forced to wear uniforms. They were not allowed to live on campus. President Samuel Spahr Laws was the most restrictive administrator, enforcing numerous rules and the wearing of drab uniforms. Still, the number of women students at the school grew despite the difficulties. When the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy opened at Rolla in 1871, its first class had 21 male and six female students. Well into the 20th century, the women who attended the school were given an arts and music program that was little better than a high school education.

Josephine Silone Yates (1859–1912) was as African-American activist who devoted her career to combating discrimination and uplifting her race. She taught at the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, and served as the first president of the Women's League of Kansas City; she was later president of the National Association of Colored Women. Yates tried to prepare women for roles as wage earners in Northern cities. She also encouraged black ownership of land for those who remained in the South. Since whites judged blacks by the behavior of the lower class, she argued that advancement of the race ultimately depended on working-class adherence to a strict moral code.
20th century
Entrepreneurs

The Hall brothers, Joyce, Rollie, and William, emerged from poverty in Nebraska in the 1900s by opening a bookstore. When the European craze for sending postcards reached America, the brothers quickly began merchandizing them and became the postcard jobber for the Great Plains. As business boomed they relocated to Kansas City in 1910 and eventually founded the Hallmark Cards gift card company, which soon came to dominate a national market. Allen Percival "Percy" Green operated the A. P. Green Company in Mexico, Missouri. Green bought a struggling brickworks in 1910 and found a national market by transforming it into a leading manufacturer of "fire bricks," bricks designed to withstand high temperatures for use in steel plants and lining the boilers of ships. In 1913, in the town of Clinton, Royal Booth, then a high school junior, began a business breeding purebred chickens. After serving in the Army in World War I, Booth returned to his booming enterprise. The growth of his Booth Farms and Hatchery had encouraged other area entrepreneurs to enter the poultry breeding business. Booth rebuilt his operation after a 1924 fire, and concentrated on breeding hens that laid eggs all year long. By 1930, Clinton's hatcheries had an annual capacity of over three million eggs, making Clinton the "Baby Chick Capital of the World" and benefiting thousands of farmers throughout the region; however, the industry declined and the hatchery closed in 1967.

The large German American population specialized in brewing beer, and established numerous beer gardens in St. Louis and other cities. Eberhard Anheuser created the E. Anheuser & Company Bavarian Brewery in St. Louis, in 1860 and in 1869 made a full partner of Adolphus Busch, who later utilized pasteurization and refrigeration to keep your fresh and marketed Anheuser-Busch products nationally. Busch introduced Budweiser to America, eventually making it the world's most popular brand through extensive advertising, including television commercials. The Busch family maintained control until it sold out to European interests in 2008 for $52 billion.

Edward Leavy, head of Pierce Petroleum company, identified the potential of the Ozark region as a tourist attraction in the 1920s. Pierce Petroleum opened roadside taverns and expanded to include gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and a variety of services for automobile travelers. The Great Depression forced Pierce Petroleum to sell out to Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation, but by then many other entrepreneurs saw the opportunity for Tours expansion in the Ozarks
Population Growth during the 1900s
1900     3,106,665
1910     3,293,335
1920     3,404,055
1930     3,629,367
1940     3,784,664
1950     3,954,653
1960     4,319,813
1970     4,677,623
1980     4,916,766
1990     5,117,073
Progressive reform

The Missouri Children's Code Commission was a Progressive Era reform movement which involved prominent educators and social workers and a coalition of citizens' groups. The first commission began in 1915 to develop proposals to protect children from harsh working conditions and deal with delinquency, neglect, and child welfare welfare. Its proposals were rejected by the conservative legislature. Appointed in 1917, the second commission revised the earlier proposals and actively engaged in an educational promotional campaign, gaining the support of various organizations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, The Red Cross, women's clubs, suffrage groups, and others. The Missouri Children's Code was finally passed in 1919.

In 1919, Missouri became the 11th state to ratify the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote.
World War I

Most of Missouri residents responded with fervent patriotism to the demands of World War I. Voluntary enlistment in the Army were high, and there was little significant draft resistance. However, German Americans had opposed entry into the war, and they are ethnic strongholds were mostly cool or hostile to the war effort. They were often denounced as unpatriotic. Officials and communities throughout the state mounted their own displays of patriotism and support for the Allies, with special emphasis on mobilizing public opinion and further strengthening agricultural programs and economies that had already been bolstered by prewar market demands. Farmers enjoyed very high prices, and their young men were generally not drafted because they were needed in farm work. While there were some traditionalistic farmers who did not believe America should be in the war, more representative was the case of Harry Truman. He operated a farm near Kansas City (1906–17) that was prosperous and strengthened him physically and emotionally for the future. Overall rural Missouri gave strong support to the war effort. In 1917 when the US Food Administration, headed by Herbert Hoover, began promoting voluntary guidelines for increased farm production and reduced consumer use of items in short supply, Missouri met, and in many cases exceeded, the national standards.
Environment

During the Progressive Era in the early twentieth century, there were three competing visions of appropriate control and use of water resources of the Missouri River; they were expressed by three organizations: the Kansas City Commercial Club (KCCC), the Missouri River Sanitary Conference (MRSC), and the Missouri Valley Public Health Association (MVPHA). The KCCC's vision of commercial development envisioned the "Economic River." MRSC's vision of a shared water supply requiring protection through community cooperation emphasized the "Healthy River." MVPHA's vision of commercial development coupled with individual efforts to prevent pollution was a compromise blending of the first two. The "Economic River" represents the Progressive approach focused on professional elites and federal solutions, whereas the "Healthy River" represents the approach focused on community leadership and solutions, as well as an early example of holistic, locally oriented conservation.

Sarvis (2000, 2002) traces the controversy over the creation of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways (ONSR) in southeastern Missouri. Boasting clear rivers and spectacular landscape, the area saw a political contest for control of river recreational development between two federal agencies, the National Park Service (NPS) and the Forest Service. Local residents opposed NPS plans that included eminent domain acquisition of private property. Both agencies presented rival bills in Congress, and in 1964 the NPS plan was selected by Congress. In the long run the NPS has successfully accommodated and supervised OSNR recreation for two million visitors a year. By contrast, the Forest Service's nearby recreational activities have handled no more than 16,000 visitors yearly.
World War II

The New Deal farm programs brought a measure of normalcy to the state's farmers, but an unexpected surge of prosperity came during World War II. Farmers were encouraged to increase food production and to conserve other materials as much as possible. Production, though increased, was affected by shortages and rationing that touched every area of the farmers' lives. Despite these difficulties, many farmers modernized and learned new techniques. As in World War I, most of the young men on the farms were deferred from the draft.

"You can get anything you want @ CeeAmerica"