Gateway Arch National Park - Museum

On the day after we first saw the Lincoln Home site we drove south from our hotel to St. Louis so that we could explore Gateway Arch National Park.  I had been to the site as a kid at least once and in 2012 on our big trip out west Amy and I had stopped by what was then the Jefferson Expansion National Memorial.  First established in 1935 the park became a National Park in 2018.

The Gateway Arch reflects St. Louis' role in the Westward Expansion of the United States during the nineteenth century. The park is a memorial to Thomas Jefferson's role in opening the West, to the pioneers who helped shape its history, and to Dred Scott who sued for his freedom in the Old Courthouse.
--from Gateway Arch National Park

We found a parking garage downtown that wasn't too expensive and started walking towards the Arch.  As it dominates the local skyline we didn't have any fears of getting lost.

The entrance to the museum is through a new west entrance that takes you underground.

Once there we bought our tickets for our trip up the Arch later and headed towards the Museum.  On our way we saw this map showing the mater watercourses of North America.

As you approach the entrance to the museum we saw a number of screens setting the stage.

As you can see here there were also a number of narrower ones people walked past.

The museum looks quite a bit different than the last time we stopped in 2012 and is now quite a bit more open with many excellent exhibits.

You'll find many traditional signs and artwork just like you would in other museums.

However, the designers also really embraced technology and have incorporated a large number of screens with fascinating digital content.

This model shows a creole house of the type that many in St. Louis inhabited when it was a French settlement.  Rather than being built on a foundation the house was built on logs placed "directly into the earth, with infill between the logs bousillage, which was made of mud, horsehair, and rocks.  A Normal truss supports the roof, with a double pitch cascading over the galleries (porches) surrounding the house." --from exhibit signage

The first era presented in the museum was colonial St. Louis, from 1764 when the settlement was founded through 1804 when it was sold along with the rest of the Louisiana Purchase to the United States.

The city was founded as a trading post on the frontier, catering to the fur trade and commerce.  The French had just lost their Canadian territories to Great Britain.

Not only were there visual exhibits, but the various galleries also had auditory components.

Have you ever felt a deer hide?

Again there were technological components such as this recipe demonstration.

After the colonial era other major incidents in American history became the focus of the Museum, such as the Mexican War.

Did you know the war was not universally popular in the US?

New Spain was a large territory that won its independence from Spain in 1821 after a long war.

American settlers in the area that is now Texas eventually revolted against the Mexican government, partly because they wanted to keep slaves even though Mexico had outlawed slavery.  The self-proclaimed Republic of Texas claimed an area far larger than what it actually controlled.  The war started after the US annexed Texas and sent troops into the disputed lands between the Rio Grande and Nueces rivers where they got into a skirmish with Mexican forces.

Ulysses S. Grant was one of those who had been opposed to the war.

During the war American forces even occupied Mexico City.

The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war and ceded all of northern Mexico to the United States.

In the years after the Mexican War many different groups headed west, especially into the Oregon Territory jointly administered by Great Britain and the United States.

The Mormons also headed west where they founded the colony that became Utah.

And in 1849 the lure of gold drew hundreds of thousands of people to California.

While the Pony Express gets the fame stagecoaches were a more popular method of traveling through the west for people and mail before the railroads.

From 1840 to 1860 the nation was consumed by the concept of Manifest Destiny and expansion.  I appreciated that the museum presented three different viewpoints on this era, from the American population of the time to Hispanic and Native American groups.  You cannot study this era and fine simple answers--it is full of nuance and different perspectives.

James Polk was a president consumed with expanding the United States.

The Mexican War was called the Yankee Invasion in Mexico and caused a massive disruption to the status quo--much more than earlier purchases of lands or more peaceful transitions had.

Also don't forget about the hundreds of treaties that have been made with Native American tribes, not all of which have been honored, or perhaps "honored more in the breach than in the observance" to quote the Bard.

This presentation I thought effectively presented the geographic context of an undoubtedly complex issue concerning American Indian Lands.

In 1783 European colonization of the then and future United States hadn't expanded much beyond the eastern seaboard.

By 1875 there had been many, many different broken treaties and the situation was much different.

I enjoyed seeing some artwork by Charles M. Russell.

There was also an opportunity to touch a bison hide.

Did you know that several ironclads were built south of St. Louis?  Sister ships including the Cincinnati were built in Mound City, Illinois.

The museum contained many, many more exhibits, more than I can possibly cover here.  If you're in the area it is well worth checking out.  It will definitely help you to think through what the era of westward expansion looked like.

~Matt