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…

Fran Landesman at the Crystal Palace, 1961. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Thelma Blumberg Collection, S0402]

Fran Landesman launched her career as a jazz lyricist in St. Louis in the 1950s. A native New Yorker, she was…

Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Mary Kathy Dains Photograph Collection, P0300]

Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey was a lifelong newspaper and magazine journalist, and a regional poet. Born in Boone…

In this undated photograph, Mary Margaret McBride (right) interviews Goldena Howard, a local Missouri historian, during a broadcast from the University of Missouri library. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Mary Kathy Dains Photographs, P0300-014950]

Described as neurotic and ample, Mary Margaret McBride became a great success on network radio while…

William Rockhill Nelson. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri Press Portraits Collection, P1196-014545]

Of British, Quaker, and Huguenot heritage, William Rockhill Nelson was born five miles west…

Jack Oakie. [University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, JWS25751]

Jack Oakie was long considered one of the screen’s most notorious scene-stealers. He had a…

Geraldine Page and Rip Torn on stage in Strange Interlude. [New York Public Library Digital Collections, Billy Rose Theatre Division, Friedman-Abeles Photograph Collection, #5026079]

Geraldine Page was born in Kirksville, Missouri, on November 22, 1924, to Leon Elwin Page,…

An early edition of the Missouri Intelligencer and Boon’s Lick Advertiser, August 20, 1819. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Newspaper Collection]

Nathaniel Patten Jr. could be characterized as Missouri’s quintessential pioneer country…

Marlin Perkins holding a bison calf. [Marlin Perkins Papers (S0516), State Historical Society of Missouri]

Marlin Perkins served as director at three zoos during his career: the Zoological Gardens in Buffalo, New York; the…

William Powell on a card distributed with packs of cigarettes. [New York Public Library Digital Collections, George Arents Collection, 1206072]

William Horatio Powell was the epitome of the suave, urbane leading man throughout his…