the State Historical Society of Missouri
![The Ben Bolt Theatre. [Courtesy of Danny Knouse]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2020-07/Ben-Bolt-Theatre.jpg?h=c4576eea&itok=2PYOXnlz "The Ben Bolt Theatre. [Courtesy of Danny Knouse]")
The Ben Bolt Theatre was a spectacular building that stood for half a century as a notable…
![A 1911 State Highway Department map of the Boone’s Lick Road and Santa Fe Trail. [State Historical Society of Missouri Map Collection, 850 M691h 1911]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2024-05/1.-boones-lick-road.jpg?itok=KLOxhlwD "A 1911 State Highway Department map of the Boone’s Lick Road and Santa Fe Trail. [State Historical Society of Missouri Map Collection, 850 M691h 1911]")
The Boone’s Lick Road was the first major conduit to the trans-Mississippi West after the …
![Jolly Mill circa 2022. [Photo by Ross Brown]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2024-03/1.-jolly-mill.jpg?h=7e5f5b54&itok=YZl1LG4V "Jolly Mill circa 2022. [Photo by Ross Brown]")
Jolly Mill, a grist mill and whiskey distillery, was built in the late 1840s on Capps Creek in…
![The Figure 8 roller coaster at Lakeside Park, added in 1907, was a “huge reversing spiral” in which cars rushed down a half-mile curving track with “three figure eights in a descent of 50 feet.” [Courtesy of the Joplin Historical & Mineral Museum]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-06/1.%20Figure%208%20Roller%20Coaster%20Lakeside%20Park%20Joplin%20Museum%20Complex.JPG?h=c36628e1&itok=hcrmvx97 "The Figure 8 roller coaster at Lakeside Park, added in 1907, was a “huge reversing spiral” in which cars rushed down a half-mile curving track with “three figure eights in a descent of 50 feet.” [Courtesy of the Joplin Historical & Mineral Museum]")
“Once the most important and popular play place of the Tri-State district,” Lakeside Park in Jasper…
![Log City, circa 1942. [State Historical Society of Missouri, John F. Bradbury Jr. Postcard Collection, R1551]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2025-02/1.-log-city.jpg?h=faa43f9b&itok=BH2xWmeN "Log City, circa 1942. [State Historical Society of Missouri, John F. Bradbury Jr. Postcard Collection, R1551]")
Located in the southwest corner of Missouri, McDonald County borders Arkansas and Oklahoma. Situated within the…
![Morrow’s Station. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Morrow and Skaggs Families Papers, R1520]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2025-01/1.-morrows-station.jpg?h=f58e211d&itok=EHHoTkhZ "Morrow’s Station. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Morrow and Skaggs Families Papers, R1520]")
In 1932, George B. Morrow, a merchant and farmer from Iberia, Missouri, purchased three and a half acres of land at…
![Red’s Giant Hamburg sometime after it closed in December 1984. [State Historical Society of Missouri, David Eslick Photograph Collection, SP0088, 1976-2001]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2024-03/1.-reds-giant-hamburg.jpg?h=cb1fa88b&itok=MzxABlva "Red’s Giant Hamburg sometime after it closed in December 1984. [State Historical Society of Missouri, David Eslick Photograph Collection, SP0088, 1976-2001]")
The original Red’s Giant Hamburg on Route 66 in Springfield, Missouri, was a legendary roadside spot for…
![This eighteenth-century map shows the mouth of the River Des Peres (unnamed, below St. Louis) and the Kaskaskia village to the south on the opposite side of the Mississippi, where the River Des Peres mission resettled after abandoning the site in what is now south St. Louis. [Frederick Charles Hicks, ed., A Topographical Description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina, 1778]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-01/1.%20River%20Des%20Peres.jpg?h=eb73c7be&itok=AwSYZpcO "This eighteenth-century map shows the mouth of the River Des Peres (unnamed, below St. Louis) and the Kaskaskia village to the south on the opposite side of the Mississippi, where the River Des Peres mission resettled after abandoning the site in what is now south St. Louis. [Frederick Charles Hicks, ed., A Topographical Description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina, 1778]")
More than half a century before the founding of St. Louis, French priests established a…