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Arrow Rock, Crossroads of the Missouri Frontier

Mike Dickey holding new book he wrote.

by Michael Dickey
Published 2004 by the Friends of Arrow Rock

This 300-page history of Arrow Rock is the most comprehensive history written to date and the first history written in 40 years. It is available from the Friends of Arrow Rock, PO Box 124 , Arrow Rock, Missouri 65320 for $24.00 postpaid or $20 if purchased at their office.

Table of Contents

Origins

  • Native Americans, Coureurs des Bois, and Frenchmen
  • First Nations: The Missouri and the Osage
  • The Mines
  • The French Presence: Bourgmount and Fort Orleans
  • The French and Indian War, 1754-1763
  • The Spanish and Osage Conflict, 1767-1796
  • Louisiana changes hands, 1797-1803

American Exploration & Occupation

  • The Lewis & Clark Expedition, 1803-1806
  • Salt and the Boone’s Lick
  • Fort Osage and the Treaty of 1808
  • Description of the Land and Its Resources
  • The Missouri River
  • The Arrow Rock Bluff
  • American Settlement and the Clash of Cultures
  • The Osage Trading House
  • The Indian War, 1814-1816

Taking up the Land
  • The Great Migration, 1816-1820
  • The Ferry Crossing at Arrow Rock
  • The Santa Fe Trail
  • The Founding of Arrow Rock and Prominent Residents
  • County Government and the Courthouse
  • Militia and Missouri ’s Little Wars
  • The Missouri River : Artery of Commerce
  • Living Off the Land: Agriculture, Minerals
  • Manufacturing and Slavery
  • Town Growth and Development

Societal Development

  • Religion and Churches
  • Recreation and Entertainment
  • Social Organizations
  • The Huston Tavern and Other Hotels
  • Education and the Academy
  • Accidents, Death, Disease, and Medicine

Science, Art, Politics and Tradesmen

  • Dr. John Sappington and His Anti-Fever Pills
  • Family Affair: Politics and the Sappington Dynasty
  • George Caleb Bingham: The Missouri Artist
  • John Sites, Gunsmith
  • The Calaboose and Godsey’s Diggings

War and its Aftermath
  • The Gathering Storm: Abolition and Judge Lynch
  • Civil War
  • Reconstruction
  • Freedmen: The African-American Experience

Historic Preservation

  • A New Beginning
  • The Friends of Arrow Rock, Inc.
  • Heritage Tourism: The Modern Crossroads

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

80 Illustrations and photographs

 

Publisher’s Preface

The Friends of Arrow Rock are pleased to publish this new history of the town of Arrow Rock and its vicinity, as part of the 45th anniversary celebration of our organization. During the tenure of the late Sue Stubbs, president of the Friends from May 2001 to January 2004, the FAR commissioned Michael Dickey to write a new and updated history of Arrow Rock to carry on the tradition so ably begun by Jean Tyree Hamilton. The Friends published Mrs. Hamilton’s popular illustrated history, Arrow Rock: Where Wheels Started West, in 1963. After several revisions, it is now out of print. In author Michael Dickey, Arrow Rock has found a very capable new historian, and the Friends are most grateful to Mr. Dickey for his thorough research, skillful writing, and careful attention to this project.

For a town whose current population is only 79, Arrow Rock has a fascinating and important history that has been recorded by a series of talented historians, with Michael Dickey as a worthy new member of that group. From the first recorded visit to the site of Arrow Rock on April 20, 1714, by the French explorer, Etienne de Véniard, sieur de Bourgmont, preserved in his 1714 report, "The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River," to the description of the site of Arrow Rock by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark when their expedition passed by the future site of the town on June 9, 1804, and up to the present, Arrow Rock has not lacked for narrators of its colorful history.

John Beauchamp Jones' 1854 Life and Adventures of a Country Merchant gives an account of his life as a storekeeper in Arrow Rock, as does T.C. Rainey's 1914 publication, Along the Old Trail: Pioneer Sketches of Arrow Rock and Vicinity. William B. Napton, Jr. both lived and recorded dramatic history along the Santa Fe Trail from Arrow Rock. The anonymous author of the 1881 History of Saline County , Missouri ably preserved the terrible history of the Civil War in the Arrow Rock neighborhood.

More recent historians have included Charles van Ravenswaay, Director of the Missouri Historical Society, whose April, 1959 article "Arrow Rock: The Story of a Town, Its People and Its Tavern," may be regarded as the impetus for the formation of the Friends of Arrow Rock at a meeting of the Arrow Rock Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution at the Tavern on June 14 of that year. Other recent Arrow Rock historians, in addition to Jean Tyree Hamilton, have been John Percy Huston, Sr., F. C. Barnhill, Thomas B. Hall, Jr., Pauline Sappington Elsea, John R. Hall, Jr., Richard R. Forry, Virginia Lee Fisher, Lynn Morrow, Catherine Waters Kennedy, Gary R. Kremer, and Timothy E. Baumann, all equally dedicated to telling the story of this one small town on the Missouri River. Now, Michael Dickey has written the most comprehensive history of Arrow Rock to date, with information from numerous sources, giving us the context of life in this region from the time of the native Indian inhabitants up to the 21st century.

The Friends of Arrow Rock wish to express our gratitude to the State Historical Society of Missouri and its Executive Director, James W. Goodrich, for providing a Brownlee Grant, which partially funded the publication of this book. The Friends invite you to join us in our work of preserving Arrow Rock and telling its story. We feel that a renewed emphasis on teaching American history in our schools is especially important at this time, and the Friends are committed to using our restored buildings and collections in Arrow Rock to further this effort. We hope you will join us.

Thomas B. Hall III, M.D.
President, Friends of Arrow Rock, Inc.
P.O. Box 124
Arrow Rock, Missouri 65320
(660) 837-3231
www.Friendsar.org
office@friendsar.org

June 14, 2004

 

Introduction  

Approximately 200,000 people annually visit Arrow Rock, Missouri . Some merely take a “windshield tour,” while others linger a day or more. A small town with a population of only 79, Arrow Rock’s history represents a microcosm of the frontier experience in Missouri . Established in 1829, the town of Arrow Rock is located in the central Missouri region known historically as the “Boonslick Country.”

Located at the intersection of the Missouri River and the Santa Fe Trail, Arrow Rock became one of the busiest trade centers between Kansas City and St. Louis. Immigrants and commercial traffic following the two major thoroughfares made Arrow Rock a crossroads of the Missouri frontier. Long before there was a town, the Arrow Rock bluff was a landmark for Native American tribes and early European explorers.

The 1881 History of Saline County correctly states:

The history of this township would fill a large volume. Its early settlement, its prominence for so long in the history of the county, the number of its citizens prominent and leading in state and national affairs, its vast resources and natural wealth, added to the substantial development made of them – all place it among the very first townships, not only in Saline county, but in the state of Missouri.

Recognition of this prominent role led some early historians to proclaim Arrow Rock and its 1834 Tavern as “ the most historic spot in Missouri . ” Preservation of the Arrow Rock Tavern led to the establishment of Missouri ’s oldest state historic site. In many respects, Arrow Rock can truly be considered the birthplace of modern historic preservation efforts in Missouri .

In 1963, Arrow Rock was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior, National Park Service. This is the highest designation a historic property can have. Many individual structures in the community are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service has also certified sites within the community as part of the Santa Fe National Historic Trail and the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Arrow Rock residents take seriously their community’s role in history and the ambiance of the town. They seek to maintain it as a crossroads for the traveler today.

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1881History of Saline County , Missouri, p. 471.

Biggs, p. 6