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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings

	JEFFERSON NATIONAL EXPANSION MEMORIAL Missouri	Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
St. Louis, downtown; address: Jefferson National Expansion Memorial 11 N. 4th St. St. Louis, MO 63102. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial

This memorial celebrates the vision of President Thomas Jefferson, architect of westward expansion, and all aspects of that vital national movement.

St. Louis, "gateway to the West," was founded in 1764 by Frenchmen from New Orleans and became a center of French-Canadian culture and Spanish governmental control until 1803, when the United States acquired it from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The continent spanning Lewis and Clark Expedition, which stimulated the opening of the West, embarked in May 1804 from its base camp, just north of St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi at the mouth of the Wood River. A couple of months earlier Meriwether Lewis, accompanied by a few soldiers, had witnessed in St. Louis the formal transfer of Upper Louisiana from France to the United States. Prior to that time he had visited there to obtain permission from Spanish officials, in control despite the nominal cession of Louisiana to France in 1803, for his expedition to proceed.

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri, commemorates the Nation's trans-Mississippi expansion, which was greatly facilitated by the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803. The late Eero Saarinen designed the gigantic arch, which symbolizes St. Louis' role as "Gateway to the West."

For decades after the Louisiana Purchase, St. Louis was a key town on the Western U.S. frontier. Conveniently located in relation to the mouths of the Ohio, Missouri, and other Mississippi tributaries, it was the hub of midcontinental commerce, transportation, and culture—the place where East met West and point of departure for the wilderness beyond. A base of operations for traders, travelers, scientists, explorers, military leaders, Indian agents, and missionaries, it was also the headquarters of the Western fur trade and focus of advanced scientific and political thought in the West.

Along the St. Louis waterfront, hulking steamboats from the East and South met the smaller river boats that served the frontier communities and outposts on the upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. At this major transfer point, a small but teeming city, mercantile establishments, boatyards, saloons, and lodginghouses served and supplied the westbound settlers and other frontiersmen who congregated there before setting out across the Plains to Oregon, California, Santa Fe, and other points.

Gateway Arch.

To dramatize westward expansion and the broad cultural, political, economic, and other benefits that accrued to the Nation from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the National Park Service and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association, a nonprofit organization of public-spirited citizens, have undertaken an extensive development program for the memorial. As part of a broad urban renewal program, crowded, obsolescent industrial buildings have been cleared away.

The dominant feature of the memorial—on the west bank of the Mississippi River on the site of the original village of St. Louis—is a 630-foot-high stainless steel arch, designed by the noted architect Eero Saarinen and completed in 1965. It symbolizes the historic position of St. Louis as gateway to the West. A transportation system carries visitors to an observatory at the top. Scaled to the heroic dimensions of such other famous structures as the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty, the Gateway Arch ranks with them in size and grandeur.

Gateway Arch.

A Museum of Westward Expansion—formerly located in the Old Courthouse—has been constructed underground at the base of the arch. Museum exhibits portraying the experiences and contributions of Western explorers, fur traders, statesmen, overland emigrants, soldiers, miners, Indians, cattlemen, and farmers present our Western heritage in new dimensions.

In 1935 the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was designated as a national historic site by Executive order. It occupies an area of slightly more than 85 acres.

NHL Designation: 05/28/87 (Gateway Arch)