Rivertowns: 100 Miles, 200 Years, Countless Stories

[Music] hi I'm Ellie Kemper and this is my hometown I'm welcoming you today from a national monument on the st. Louis riverfront that you'll all recognize the arch st. Louis is where America's two biggest rivers the Mississippi and the Missouri meet and when America was young nothing could have been more important while the arch and I are standing here on the banks of the Mississippi the arch actually commemorates something that happened on the Missouri River where Lewis and Clark did something well monumental just ten miles north of st. Louis where these two rivers meets Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri River all the way to the Pacific Ocean their journey was more than 200 years ago and it's just one of the fascinating stories that can be told as we head west from st. Louis on the last hundred miles Missouri these are true stories of wilderness becoming civilization immigration war celebration and conservation it's more than stories about the backyard in st. Louis it's the story of America let's go explore [Music] the Missouri is the longest river in the country winding down from its source in the Rocky Mountains of Montana all the way to its confluence with the Mississippi River near st. Louis although it flows for over 2,500 miles some of its most captivating stories took place in the forests farms and towns that stand watch over the last 100 miles of its journey as it travels through the Missouri River Valley I love mythic stories and mythical qualities and big statements and heroic figures I was born in Missouri went to school in New Mexico and then on to California and then came back to this area and rediscovered the beauty of the landscape I'd love to introduce figures into those landscapes and to do that he needs story to tell working with authors dan and Connie Burkhardt Brian produced illustrations for their children's book growing up with the river filled with stories that follow nine generations as they experience the events and changes that shaped not only the towns of Missouri River Valley but the country as a whole The Adventures of Lewis and Clark immigration that shaped the nation the arrival of steamboats and railroads the heartbreak of war and devastating natural economic and environmental disasters the prompted triumphs of human innovation the oldest living witness to many of these stories are the massive bur oak trees that thrive in the rich bottom lands some of them having stood through more than 300 years of discovery settlement development and conservation efforts curiosity and young people that's what it's really all about hopefully they want to explore get out into nature and even though it's a book for kids I think we adults also get something out of it I hope I've contributed to that through the poetry of the pieces and the lyricism trying to tell people what a jewel we have what a treasure we have right in our backyard [Music] over two centuries before st. Louis became the center for fur trade French trappers and traders also known as voyagers were pushing the known boundaries of their new world as they worked and explored from Canada to the Missouri River Valley establishing trading posts and forts along the way historian Crosby Brown discovered the remnants of one of these forts and after months of archaeology and years of research and restoration now his the fort opened as a living history museum high on a bluff overlooking the Missouri [Music] although the fort gives an incredible glimpse into the life of a french trader his Native American wife and their son the voyagers who came to the fort lived most of their lives in the wilds building trust with the tribes they traded traveled and sometimes lived with they weren't looking for gold they weren't looking for the Fountain of Youth these were mostly individual guys who loved the wilderness who loved the lifestyle and integrating with the Indians as they went they learned how to live in the wilderness in North America one way to survive the freezing temperatures on the river in winter was to make capes gloves and hats from the skins of the black bears who used to roam in abundance throughout the Missouri River Valley oh no these guys are in 1 to 3 feet of water out here trapping beaver wet above the knees oh one of the greatest skills the Native Americans shared with the voyagers was the art of making a canoe that would navigate the shallow wide Missouri River the word Missouri it's a souund dialect word which means man out of a man who used long canoes because the Missouri tried living on this river used plenty flirty and 40-foot long ones the canoes are really versatile and they could get into different kinds of water different kinds of current so iconic was this tribe and their impressive canoes that they became the namesake for both the river and the state [Music] every generation rediscovers the Missouri River and we're seeing that recently with the mr3 40 where people paddle nonstop from basically Kansas City to st. Charles its 340 miles downriver and it typically takes three or four days but we all grew up with these stories of these great explorers Lewis and Clark Daniel Boone John Coulter all these amazing people that really their character was defined through tests in the wilderness they have those challenges and opportunities is an incredibly important gift that the river continues to give back in 1804 at the request of Thomas Jefferson Lewis and Clark fed up the Missouri River and tried to find an overland route to the Pacific Ocean after securing supplies in st. Louis and making final recruitments in st. Charles the expedition's set off on their mission stopping briefly in Lhasa right now a small French farming community built around the trading fort it was the last European settlement the group would encounter before they set off into the unknown and the people there gave them a warm send-off most likely never expecting to see them again two days after the other st. Charles May 23rd they were in the area that was referred to as tavern rock ELISA said he was going to scale the top of this 300-foot Bluff that sarah got near the top and he started sliding down the bluff and according to the William Clark he took his knife and literally saved himself from falling off the edge of it that's how close it came to being the Clark expedition the river was just treacherous in this big giant 55 foot keel boat they built turned out to be just absolutely wrong boat to take out on the Missouri River and within days the boat started getting hung up on the logs back then the current was so fast that it would literally move our sandbars would appear and disappear right before your eyes and a stand bar started farming around the boat and the boat started swinging around it started tilting over the whole crew had to jump out of the boat and hold on to it to keep it from sinking and those are the kind of experiences that turn that a group of on guys Jays and soldiers who were piloting those boats into experienced river men it was really where the crew became a group of men willing as Clark's attend or any fatigue for the success of the mission on the way back they approached Laurette and they see dairy cows in the fields and that told him they were getting close to civilization again 28 months after bidding them farewell the inhabitants of la Charette were in delighted shock as the expedition pedaled furiously back down the river intent on reaching st. Louis as fast as they could to send word to President Jefferson of their success the small town of la Charette faded into history becoming part of the Missouri River as it carved yet another new path but the town is honored with a marker in nearby Marthasville the Lewis and Clark boathouse and Nature Center and st. Charles houses a replica of the massive keel boat used on the first leg of the journey several times a year the discovery expedition of st. Charles and the museum partner to use the boat in reenactments providing a glimpse into the excitement and uncertainty the expedition must have felt as they headed up the Missouri River and into the unknown [Music] the popularity and expertise of world-famous frontiersman Daniel Boone had helped to build the state of Kentucky and was seen as a surefire way to attract others to the new wilderness that would one day become Missouri stills fry well into his old age Daniels Kenai noted the beauty and abundance of the femme au sage valley and he spent the last two decades of his life hunting and exploring with his sons these days visitors to the historic Daniel Boone home in defiance can experience what life was like for early settlers in the Missouri River Valley so he came out here in 1799 a little bit before the Louisiana Purchase he was actually invited out here by the Spanish who owned the land at the time to come out here and bring people with him although he was given plenty of land he chose to live with his family either is Daniel Morgan Boone's Homer or nathan Boone's great stone house which of course still survives that's where he died but he would spend his time at either place where he would be waited on by a ton of grandchildren we just love being married he loved practical jokes his entire life and he had a pretty good one when he was an old man living in this house Daniel had a coffin built for him and he keeps that coffin upstairs on the fourth floor and on occasion if he heard his grandkids coming up the stairs he'd get in that coffin close the lid when they walked by he'd jump out and scare him it sounds like being home do that all the time he was a bit of a goofball really I like him Jill write that story you know he seems more real the historic Daniel Boone home is now run by the st. Charles County Parks Department the site also includes a reconstructed 19th century village and hosts a wide variety of occasions such as weddings and festivals as well as educational programs including daily tours and field trips it's learning in a very real way who was here at the time and bringing them to life it's a very tactile experience meaning we get kids and adults as well involved not just sitting there and listen to someone talk they're going to get to witness the types of things they actually have to do out here to live out here so then it's not about history it's living it's now it's very much about the experience of the time and bringing it to the present not long after the Kentucky woodsman and their families followed Daniel Boone to the area another influx of settlers arrived whose convictions and traditions would have an incredible impact not just on the Missouri River Valley but on the country as a whole strangely enough they were inspired by the Boone family's neighbor an occasional bear hunting partner Gottfried Duden Duden was a German lawyer who had spent several years living in Missouri exploring and writing enthusiastically about the opportunity and freedom at health for his countrymen for many living in the Germanic areas these were dark times of political oppression overpopulation and economic hardship Duden published his collected writings as a book which was immediately and immensely popular in his homeland resulting in a way of German immigration to the Missouri River Valley in the early 1830s there's room for millions of Germans to come settle together and create a farms up and down the Missouri River which they did with the influx of settlers from both Kentucky and abroad claiming land meat and furs the tribes that have farmed and hunted along the Missouri for centuries soon faded further into the wilderness as towns and communities were built near the Fertile river bottoms the land was cleared of timber for the steamboats and cultivated into crops and orchards destroying much of the natural habitat and destabilizing the banks this coupled with a growing regional and national population to feed had a chain-reaction effect on wildlife in Missouri the black bear was all but hunted to extinction for its meat and pelt while the brightly colored raucous Carolina parakeet was completely wiped out before the end of the 19th century without understanding what these losses would mean for the region people continued to pursue their dreams of freedom and opportunity in this place that was so full of promise [Music] inspired by dooms book a variety of skilled German craftsmen and farmers headed straight for the Missouri River Valley and founded one of its fastest growing and most successful towns Herrmann's close proximity to the river and its abundance of good farmland and natural resources like iron ore clay and timber quickly turned it into a bustling community the river of course was key to the bringing of people to this area and the transport of goods away from the area and that was all by steamboat before the railroads came through Hermann was a very large port it was a natural place for that to occur they were building steamboats here they did steamboat excursions and they would go out on a fishing expedition that might include abandoned beers and sometimes the ladies then would also Commission their own boat they'd end up meeting on one of the Missouri River islands although Missouri was full of the opportunities that they had been denied at home the immigrants still wanted to keep a sense of identity and the traditions that they had left so far behind the German settlement society came specifically to this area away from other english-speaking populations in order to preserve their language and their culture doesn't mean that they didn't interact with English speakers but they wanted to create this unique place that they could preserve those items that they hold most dear but also the freedoms of the United States in 1848 there's a revolution in Germany but the revolution failed and so the revolutionaries decide hey we're going to America because they have already instituted the ideals that we're striving for in Germany I think to say that the majority of the German immigrants were disappointed to find that slavery was still a viable institution in this country is probably an understatement they just thought it was a an utter contradiction in terms of what we were as a free people and yet we enslaved others a key part of the anti-slavery impact was the German press Edward Neal was the editor of the Herman Volken blot which was the weekly newspaper here in 1853 he began the publication on the front page of the paper Uncle Tom's hota Uncle Tom's Cabin which in serialized form ran for 26 weeks on the front page until the entire book had been printed when you think about the amount of time it took to set that press and to print that every week it's an expression and a reflection of his strongly held beliefs against slavery so deep was their belief in freedom for all people that the house ins of German Americans enlisted to fight for the Union in the Civil War there was entire regiments of German volunteers their belief in freedom was so strong that there put their life on the line some historians have said if it were not for the German immigrants in the Middle West and I think we can safely say primarily in Missouri the Civil War may have turned out very differently through war peace and progress Hermann managed to maintain many of his German traditions in the town still welcomes thousands of visitors a year to their October and my fests when Jim and Mary dear bird passed through in 1971 they fell in love with Herman and decided to begin investing in the future of the town by preserving its past one of these endeavors is Herman farm which sits high on a bluff overlooking the Missouri and contains an incredible history the were keen sustainable farm and a variety of historic buildings have been restored to enchant and educate visitors about the early days of this River town from a 1774 French trading post to a mansion that was built when steamboats still passed by we are encouraging people to learn more about the first Germans that settled here and how they live talking about the different crops that would have grown and just the vastness of the farm and being able to see all the land the mansion on the property that was the home of George husband George footman is the gentleman known as the grandfather of the grape industry the wine industry is a critical component of their early success of the town of Herman this was the wine center of the United States before prohibition but across the Atlantic the wine industry wasn't doing quite so well for years a mysterious pest had been destroying the vineyards of France as research was published descriptions of the devastation rang a bell with Missouri State entomologist Charles Valentine Riley who immediately recognized the culprit as being Falak szura also known as the root louse and George husband they gesture with a couple of adventures in the area realized our root stock was flexural resistant so the conclusion was reached if you took Missouri root stock and you grafted the French varietals to that root stock it would resist the root last so host men along with a st. Louis firm sent over 400,000 vine cuttings to France thus saving the grape industry in the wine industry for all of the world but history and tradition aren't the only things Herrmann farm works to preserve we've begun restoration with a few endangered breeds the one we're most proud of at this point is the shire draft horse the shire is the largest breed of horse in the world its size and strength making it useful as both a war and a plow horse but when the Industrial Revolution replaced their brawn with machines the breed became endangered at one point in the 1950s I believe it was there was only a couple of dozen shire draft horses registered in the United States and we right now have 22 the current farm so we feel like we're really doing something right here [Music] while many of the Missouri River towns had Bluffs to manuever New Haven had easy access on and off the water making it a perfect place to cut ice in the winter before work began to tame the river in the 1920s and 30s the Missouri was wider and more shallow and it would freeze so solid that a team of horses could drive across it they would actually go out on the river and using big saws cut chunks of ice which were then hauled and stored in the ice house insulated with cork layered in straw and that would be the source of ice for your cooling before we had electricity and refrigeration the arrival of the railroad to many of the towns like New Haven often signaled a boost to their economy businesses like the wolf milling company and the central hotel thrived with regular train service the central hotel built in 1879 was popular with travelers and railroad employees alike as part of their efforts to preserve history in this small town mark and Ellen Zobrist restored the Central Hotel and it still welcomes visitors to New Haven today since trains made it possible to transport goods and people faster and further than steamboats could the rails were beginning to replace the river for transportation to compete larger and larger steamboats were built like the ill-fated Montana which before it became entangled with the Wabash bridge and sank measured over 250 feet long [Music] unfortunately the shallow Missouri was skilled at hiding fallen trees or sandbars just out of sight and these huge vessels would often get snagged usually sinking slowly enough for passengers to escape unscathed train travel held its own risks and they had the potential to be much more devastating but accidents did little to diminish the allure of the speed and convenience of riding the rails small ferries like the literally horse powered tilde Clara SIL ran from one side of the river to the other but it was usually to connect travelers to rail stops but the one thing the railroad couldn't replace was the excitement of a showboat coming down the river the twinkling lights and Calliope promising a night of entertainment [Music] as the new century began times were golden for Missouri which was by now the fifth most populous state the 1904 World's Fair in st. Louis coincided with the 100th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition the wilderness they had experienced now almost unrecognisable as prosperous towns and farms tamed the landscape which was quickly becoming criss-crossed by miles of railroad tracks in the face of these changes the river held on to its reputation for being unpredictable it used to be known for moving all around it didn't really have Rock along its banks it would just be sand that the river is kind of carving through sand and mud there were a lot of towns that grew up along the river and either got flooded out or the river moved away the town of Augusta one of the major floods you know water comes up time passes the water goes back down the river was a mile away for many years abandonment by the river would have meant almost certain death to a small town that depended on its traffic and resources but when the MKT railroad which eventually became known as the Katey opened in 1896 it connected small communities that were based around grain elevators found every 10 miles or so and opened up more opportunities for the people who have been living in relative isolation but the years of aggressive clearing of the river bottoms and increased agriculture had begun once again to shift the rivers flow and reveal or accentuate flooding patterns by the late 19th and early 20th centuries the river was devouring homes crops and even the k-t railroad tracks with uncomfortable regularity some like Saint John's United Church of Christ along highway 94 relocated to higher ground to escape future flooding but for farmers the reward versus risk factor proved too high to move their crops out of the bottoms the fertility of the bottoms are so much greater than any other land around that nobody wants to lose a crop but if you lose one every ten years or so you've made it up in the previous nine years it's just that good of dirt a crop that flourished in this good dirt was corn and it would be pivotal to the success of one of the Missouri River Valley's longest-running and most unusual businesses the story of the corncob pipe really starts when the Pioneers came to America and they saw the Native Americans smoking tobacco and with corn they mimicked them and tried to make their own pipes and so the legend is and one of those people came up the Missouri River which is right behind us and contacted mr. tippy who owned this company was a woodturner and asked him the Pecos burn those or make those pipes on his wood lathe and he tried it and made a few extra I guess to put in the window and within a few years that became his sole business Missouri beer shaman was certainly not the only company that made corncob pipes but was the first the Missouri Museum company has made some of the most iconic pipes of the 20th century including those enjoyed by Popeye and General MacArthur he saw one of our pipes that we've been making since the 1880s the bowl was too deep on it so he he had us moved the shank the part that comes out of the bowl up and that's the classic MacArthur that you see that pipe is popular in Japan because General MacArthur after World War Two was instrumental in keeping the emperor from being executed so especially the older people in Japan have a fondness for MacArthur we've shipped to Japan probably since World War two and they aren't just big in Japan per year this small factory hand makes and ships around 500,000 pipes all over the world founded in Washington Missouri in 1869 the Missouri meerschaum company was already world-famous when it sent an impressive display of its corncob pipes to the World's Fair joining the Missouri Corn Palace in a demonstration of Midwest ingenuity and abundance but just a decade after this celebration of international innovation and progress World War one broke out in Europe and a shadow would fall on those who had been instrumental to the development of many Missouri River towns like Washington and Hermann as Americans watched events unfold in Germany during both world wars suspicions began to grow around their fellow citizens of German descent and soon suspicions turned into discrimination there actually were laws that precluded you from speaking German I mean it was considered unpatriotic to speak German but the German Americans once again stepped up and volunteered to fight for their new homeland those that had German ancestry and still probably had German relatives that were you know on the other side they volunteered in extraordinary numbers to serve in the in the world wars to prove their patriotism but it would have been a difficult time their starvation and their having issues in Germany so your you relate to those that are still there and you had to question could you send something or would it be misunderstood in terms of what you were doing but on the other hand you have family that's in dire straits and you could help soon the United States would be going through its own hard times [Music] when the akin severity of the Great Depression swept through the country it did not forget the Missouri River Valley [Music] however several Public Works initiatives were set in motion to stabilize agriculture and enhance the region while providing desperately needed jobs one of these projects set out to do what seemed impossible to tame the wandering Missouri River during several summers in the late 20s and 30s there were 10,000 men living on barges and dorms on barges on this river working to turn it from a kind of a wide wild river into sort of a narrow predictable river that would stay in one place they did a lot of bank stabilization with willow mats they would weave all these these willow trees together for example basket-like and then they would pile it with rock they would strip down old steamboats they'd tear the tops off of them he used the hole to haul rock we pressed the river into the levee system so that we had a navigable river but then from the levee to the bluffs we have very fertile land and that's what is cultivated today now we've sort of grown our culture around this new river that we created so in it when it does shake its wild tail you know it can be kind of painful sometimes for some of us yeah when the levees break here in Warren County the river has a tendency to go back to where it was 150 years ago if it breaks up a tree lower it seems like it breaks every levee all the way down to Augusta and it wants to run right past piers piers store has seen its fair share of flooding once sitting on a prime riverfront location until the Missouri characteristically shifted 2 miles away the general store and post office was built in 1896 to serve the communities that were quickly growing up around the new KT railroad a welcome sight to weary travelers and a medium place for low Pearse stood through flood after flood as the river returned to its old path ralph gloss myers family-owned operated and lived above the store for sixty years and learned to adapt to the fickle missouri first what I remember was a fifty-one flood and that time we never moved out of it we just moved upstairs the candy counter I remember that was Moo juice in my bedroom that was the old last top candy counter to get your mail you had to go around the back of the store and climb up on a ladder and to go across the roof and through a window upstairs and that was a post office that's how you got your mail in 51 flood while floods affect whole communities farmers usually experience the most loss even long after the waters have receded and crops are replanted farmers around Augusta recently dealt with a levee break that threatened to triple their farm insurance if it wasn't fixed before a specific date one red tape delay after another brought them dangerously close to the deadline so the farmers got together and fixed it themselves the Corps of Engineers would inspect it and if they did it right they would approve it one week and one day later running 10-hour shifts they moved I think it was a hundred thousand cubic yards of dirt that they scraped off of 40 acres and they repaired that levee that was unique into itself but what if that really represents is the river town even though Augusta doesn't sit on the river any longer that's indicative of the kind of corporation of the attitude that existed for centuries farming has been an integral part of life for many in the Missouri River Valley and a necessity for all of those who benefit from their work and until recently most of the farms here as with all over the country were operated by families being able to work together with your parents as you grew up that that had a lot value to the ability to be here on God's creation what and watching the changing seasons and see the breath of new life you know as cows have calves or as the hay crop grows those are things that not everybody gets to see the small family farms are disappearing to a certain extent so that's all changing I guess one of the fears I have is who's going to who's going to farm the land in the future because it's not a lot of young people involved up until the 1930s many of these small farms had existed in a certain degree of geographic isolation even after the railroad had arrived but FDR's Public Works initiatives including paved roads in the construction of the Washington Bridge soon provided these communities with quicker more direct access to larger towns and the city of st. Louis one popular destination that drew visitors from all over especially from smog-filled st. Louis was the Shah a burrito known today as the Shaw nature reserve notoriously the st. Louis area was hugely polluted in the 1920 teen 30s almost entirely from burning soft cold people had to turn on their lights on their cars driving downtown in order to be able to navigate the air pollution was a very serious problem for the garden that the pollution got worse and worse had began to kill the outside plants that trees the conifers the pines and so forth and very critically for the garden it began to kill the orchids that we were growing kids nowadays would never recognize this but in order to go on a date then you pretty well had to bring a corsage and the garden was actually making nearly a hundred thousand dollars a year by the early 1920s from selling corsages for these avid suitors they were all dying which was a really bad thing financially the trustees of the garden thought about what to do and they decide let's move out in the country beyond the radius of the heavy smog in 1925 as a result of their search for places to move the garden found three essentially abandoned farms at grey summit in Franklin County about 35 miles away and they blot them and began to build greenhouses there first of all to take care of the orchids and they began to think the air pollution being so awful that they would ultimately move out there the garden kept building out there and thinking of moving until about nineteen thirty nine forty which is about when the smoke was abated now the tendency is to run it mainly as a Nature Reserve it's beautiful miles and miles of trails out there and one of the adornments of the whole st. Louis area the present-day mission of the Nature Reserve is to provide stewardship for our environment through education restoration and protection of natural habitats and generally public enjoyment of the natural world it's also a tremendous value to expose our public at a very young age but at any age to knowledge of Natural History and of our environment connecting people of our region to some of the historical plant communities that still exist and under proper management can thrive in the contemporary landscape we really value things that we understand and so we need to foster that understanding which then Foster's and develops appreciation and ultimately stewardship of our environment because the conservation and restoration work that we do today if subsequent generations don't learn to value and protect this there will not be longevity and perpetuity to our efforts I knew that something bad was going on they were moving tanks army tanks and army gear you could hear that roar from where we live I can remember you know feeling scared can you know comprehend what it was all about and then of course I knew that my grandma had to move and that they were taking her form all this land 17,000 acres was acquired by the United States Army and beginning in 1940 the government is watching the events over in Europe they're seeing the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and as the government is kind of evaluating resources and looking around what infrastructure do we have and really it was inadequate and the government finds this place for the country and likely the world's largest TNT and DMT production plant looking for a huge amount of land with an even bigger water source the government set its eyes on 17,000 acres in the Missouri River Valley nearby the Daniel Boone bridge would make the site accessible to workers while the MKT railroad provided a necessary link in the supply chain all these things kind of come together to have a defendable property in the center of the country with all these resources available the downside of course is that people lived here the close-knit towns of Howell Hamburg and to nerville contained almost 700 people many of whom had inherited farms and homes going back well over a hundred years once notified that the government was forcing them to sell their land and start over with much less than they had been living with many protested resisting wave after wave of pressure and reduced offers eventually taking the matter to court but even a settlement several years down the road couldn't mend broken hearts it is people that had lives here that were born here raised children worked hard they socialized there were dance halls in Hamburg there were baseball teams that were for women not softball the were lots of churches so there was a real strong fabric churches went up everything with all at once and they had no place to be and no place to be frankly my grandfather refused to move and so they picked him up in a rocking chair and put him on a pickup truck and took him to the gate as an act of finality many homes and farms were destroyed when there's something traumatic like that happens to a family and this is a whole community I don't want it to be forgotten but 17,000 acres a war and tons of TNT couldn't keep the people of howl Hamburg and to nerville apart for the past 52 years there has been an annual reunion now held at the Weldon Springs sight interpretive center and attended by the children and grandchildren of those affected over homemade casseroles and desserts they keep the stories of community resistance and sacrifice alive my particular family they looked forward that was we had to do it and it was for the greater good it was for the country - the day mom died she had a flag outside her home after the war enclosure of the TNT plant st. Louis submitted its proposal to use the now empty land at Walden spring as home for the United Nations headquarters when the proposal was declined the Missouri Department of Conservation bought much of the land with the help of a generous donation from Alice Bush in memory of her late husband and formed the August a Busch Memorial Conservation Area though it began as a place to encourage the preservation and enjoyment of nature and wildlife the area became a green fortress against suburban sprawl as st. Charles County began to experience a huge population migration from st. Louis when you have this continuation of all this green space it's it's incredible you know prairies and forests and savannas and glades and hiking trails and fishing I mean the very first fish I ever caught as a kid you know probably six years old was at the lakes at the bush area but next door to this escape into nature the government still owned land at Weldon Spring and the Cold War was just beginning in 1955 the United States Atomic Energy Commission built the Wheldon spring chemical plant where uranium ore was refined to be shipped and concentrated form to other facilities after closing in 1966 the contaminated buildings and land were abandoned for 20 years there was no waste management program because nuclear technology nuclear waste was not a thing yet and so it wasn't until regulations came into place that now there's a process to manage this stuff the public actually started the whole process in the mid 80s they had a public meeting at the high school where over a thousand people came and said you have to take care of this message over there while he's praying the area was declared a Superfund site in 1987 and the government funded cleanup began working with the public the Department of Energy the Environmental Protection Agency and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources determine the best solution was to dispose of the waste where it had been generated an integral part to this plan was the design of a cell that would contain the hazardous material after having worked on several similar projects around the country Marge Oakes was selected as the conceptual design engineer working from the cell's conception to completion for this particular design a minimum of 200 years that we could guarantee that there would be no problems with the design but we took it to another level and took it to a thousand years so we did the maximum credible earthquake calculations we did the maximum precipitation that could be falling on a site in 24 hours we relied mainly on natural materials like clay because we couldn't guarantee plastics or liners that were being used could last we had over 40 buildings that had to come down they had to be laid in precisely so that we didn't have any kind of holes in the material that would eventually collapse and work its way up to a sinkhole in the surface before the last rock had even been placed it was clear that the disposal cell was an amazing achievement but while it is a monument to ingenuity and environmental Redemption it also stands as a reminder of the devastation humans can cause to the world around them wanting to educate the public on just what had transpired there the Department of Energy opened the Wheldon spring sight interpretive center and with safety beam top priority it has a team that conducts regular testing and monitoring of the cell and the land around it I felt really good about the project especially after the interpretive center was built because it got to extend the learning processes that we went through into teaching kids as well as adults about what we had to do how you really have to watch out what you're doing to the environment be very considerate of the earth prohibition took a heavy toll on the wineries and towns of the Missouri River Valley nearly all of the vineyards that had been carefully cultivated since the 1800s were burned and turned into cattle pastures it wasn't until the 1960s and 70s the grapes began to be planted again and some of the old wineries were brought back to life Augusta is the Gateway to Missouri wine country which has experienced a renaissance over the past few decades and is now a favorite destination for tourists wedding parties and day-trippers from st. Louis Mount Pleasant had been doing a booming business before the 18th amendment was passed and is once again a favorite spot for a special occasion or relaxing afternoon the impressive cellar dug out by hand in 1881 hosts dinner parties tours and of course barrels of wine and port in 1980 Augusta became the first federally approved American bitter cultural area beating out Napa for the status by just eight months there are now so many wineries in the region that visitors can simply follow the wine Strasse or wine road by driving down scenic highway 94 another way to explore this beautiful area is by following the path that the MKT railroad laid down over a century ago but in the late 80s the MKT filed a petition for abandonment of their line but it turned out about that time that law had been passed called the National Trail System Act preserve an abandoned right away and then come up with an interim user and what better kind of an interim user would you have than trail people that's when the the Missouri Department of the Natural Resources got interested in a didn't we embarked upon creating the longest rail trail in the nation as nature reclaimed its place between the rails there were many who saw the great potential in the tracks being converted into a trail especially Ted and Pat Jones who devoted their time energy and support into making it happen however there were some who adamantly opposed the notion especially farmers with land to reclaim every one of their deeds had a reversionary clause in it saying that at the railroad cease to operate then that land would revert back to them and so the big debate would be whether or not a rail trail was a railroad purpose or not once the trail got open in 1990 just three years later we got struck by the worst flood misery River history ended up destroying half the trail and by that time people wouldn't let it go away the farmers you would think they'd be doing somersaults over it but no actually they discovered the trail was bringing prosperity their small towns so it's one a period of three years the trail had already become a treasure to the state today the katietravels through 240 miles of Central Missouri and is the longest unbroken rail trail corridor in the country allowing cyclists pedestrians and equestrians a chance to get off the highways and back into nature with over 30 trail heads many offering refreshments lodging bike rental and easy access to wineries and historic sites the KT is the perfect way to explore the past ah enjoying the present we've had people come in from Japan even fly over just to ride to Katy Trail who are traveling on the trail sometimes camp out right here and hang out with us and so they're bringing a new element to a very small community to probably 80% of the people you'll see today or most days is off the Katy bicycle trail this place I truly believe wouldn't survive without the Katy being there we've done a study and economic impact study few years ago and annually it generates about a 18 million dollars economic impact for Missouri and that's because people buy bicycles when they ride the Katy Trail they stop in local communities and stay in bed and breakfast and hotels it's our 18th annual Katy trail ride we've got three hundred cyclists from all over the United States that are participating in the five-day four-night tour of the 240 mile Katy Trail State Park the annual Katy trail ride takes cyclists on a tour through time as they pedal through or stop at many of the river towns that made history happen passing by cornfields and old river boat landings riders can visit historic gems like the Pierce store to learn more about conservation and local history and this was exactly what Ted and Pat Jones were hoping to achieve when they developed the Katy to give everyone the chance to enjoy the countryside and the stories it has to tell [Music] 37 miles west of the confluence the Howard Bend water treatment plant has been providing clean water to st. Louis city since 1929 notably surviving the flood of 93 we were able to prepare in advance because the river was building overtime to the flood conditions and it really made us an island we had a levee that kept out the river we stayed in production but it was a challenge employees came in by boat and staged and did the job thanks to plants like Howard Bend the Missouri River provides water to half the state's population including both st. Louis and Kansas City one of the many reasons why the Missouri is a great source for drinking water is that it's a relatively clean River before it even goes through the treatment process helping to keep it healthy is a priority for Missouri River relief a nonprofit that connects people to the river we have the really lucky job of taking thousands of people out on the Missouri River and boats or canoes we do a lot of river cleanups and we've had 25,000 volunteers we've picked up over 900 tons of junk off the river and 18 years and we also do a lot of river education with students and adults it's a powerful experience and I think some kids it actually really changes them just just that one time after decades of deforestation along the river's banks efforts are being made to reinstate native plants and trees including the iconic bur oak forest relief is a nonprofit that provides education programs and free trees all over the state including along the came the trail we promote planting trees and enriching lives there's been studies that have proven that it actually helps with mental health when you're walking through a Natural Area the Katy Trail the trails like this give us the opportunity to show off these trees show off the native trees we have so people learn things as they see these trees and I can actually see what native composition looks like that treaty once it gets to its full maturity I won't be here but it's actually just leaving a lasting legacy from that tree not my legacy but that trees legacy and I kind of helped that happen that's kind of the reason why I became a forester in the first place it's because the decisions that we make on a daily basis last hundreds of years working with Scott and forests relief is is this really critical but also important is Cady land trust you know our farmers and that join the trail our business owners and the people that actually use the trail I think it's about partnership and bringing different people together and that's what the Katy Trail does so well hopefully in 300 years we'll leave a legacy for others and the Missouri River Valley's gonna be as important then as it is now the events of the last 100 miles and 200 years on the Missouri River tell the story of America the waters that had carried the long canoes of the missouria tribe and the keel boat of Lewis and Clark also provided a conduit for those seeking adventure and a better life promises of freedom brought German immigrants while settlers from Kentucky followed Daniel Boone and what had once been wilderness soon became farms and towns forests were cleared along the riverbanks to plant crops in some of the country's richest soil and the timber eventually used to build the grand steamboats that ruled the Missouri for a few short decades as more wild places were cultivated to feed families and a growing economy the railroads displaced the steamboats and birds and wildlife were hunted to extinction when the shadow of civil war fell over the country the anti-slavery convictions of the newly arrived German Americans helped to turn the tide for the Union and when America faced world conflict the sacrifice of long-established communities fueled victory in the Second World War as the river towns along the Missouri grew nature was losing its place and open green spaces were becoming scarce visionaries at the Missouri Botanical Garden turned abandoned farmland into a refuge for native plants and wildlife a gift from Alice Bush created a 7,000 acre conservation area to preserve a place for picnics fishing and hiking Ted and Pat Jones converted the old MKT rails into the longest biking trail in America and built a park with a stunning river level view of the confluence [Music] to continue the legacy of preservation thousands of Missourians work tirelessly as they provide habitat for pollinators and endangered wildlife clean the river eliminate invasive plant species and plant trees one sapling for a corn at a time trees that will witness the future of this unique region as they have its past [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] local support for river towns was provided by the Katy Land Trust the Trudy be Valentine family Carlotta lotzie Clark Herman Holton and the William T Kemper foundation

Channel: Nine PBS

Views: 6,494

Rating: 4.7108436 out of 5

Keywords: Missouri River, Nine Network, Rivertowns, Mississippi River, Growing Up with the River, Nine Generations on the Missouri, Katy Land Trust, Katy Trail, Ellie Kemper, Lewis and Clark, Missouri River Valley, Bryan Haynes

Id: rq1cUJWiGyg

Length: 58min 27sec (3507 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 27 2018