Missouri Tourism and Destination Guide. St Louis Cheap Hotels and more.

Missouri Tourism and Destination Information Guide. St Louis Cheap Hotels, Maps, Travel Tips and more.

The state of MISSOURI , where the forest meets the prairie and the Mississippi River meets the Missouri River, has just two significant cities. Dominant St Louis sits midway down its eastern fringe; Kansas City is almost directly across on the western border. The pair are linked by I-70, but there's not much in between to warrant stopping off. In contrast, the south features the beautiful hillsides, streams and ragged lakes of the Ozark Mountains , as well as the booming country-and-western town of Branson ; while in the east , small river towns such as Hannibal and serene Ste Genevieve brighten the course of the Mississippi. The northwest , home of the Pony Express and outlaw Jesse James, still strikes up images of frontier times.

Although the first French colonists honored the claims of local Native Americans, such as the original Missouri, when the area was sold to the US in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase, the Indians were driven west by a great rush of settlers. In the 1840s and 1850s immigrants from Germany and Ireland flooded into eastern Missouri. Outnumbering their pro-slavery predecessors, they swung the balance in favor of staying in the Union during the Civil War. However, Confederate guerrilla forces attracted considerable support among slave-owners in the west of the state. Meanwhile Missouri, and St Louis in particular, was establishing itself as an important gateway to the West. Today, the " Show Me State " (so called because of the supposed skepticism of the typical Missourian) retains a conservative air, particularly in the rural areas.
Branson Missouri
Nestled among beautiful Ozark lakes, the resort of BRANSON (year-round population 5000), forty miles south of Springfield on US-65, is one of the top auto destinations in the country. Over seven million visitors a year are attracted to what's become known as the "Ozark Disneyland" by thirty-plus music venues (almost all of a country bent), a few theme parks and lots of good ol' family fun.

" The Strip ," until recently merely Hwy-76, looks like it was thrown together with a pitchfork - a hideous agglomeration of theme parks and theaters owned and/or performed in by big-name stars. The spectrum ranges from Japanese fiddler Shoji Tabuchi and ancient crooner Andy Williams, to banal mountain humor joints like Baldknobbers and Presleys' (not that Presley). Lesser lights include Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff, and Jim Spiders and Snakes Stafford's place. Tickets for a two-hour show are fairly priced, at around $20, and there's no shortage of takers in summer for most, if not all, of the town's 57,000 seats - a figure said to exceed that of Nashville. Branson shows are firmly geared toward families; you won't find anything remotely progressive or avant-garde, although the new Ripley's Believe It or Not performance is a step in a new direction.

The Strip, once dubbed "the world's longest parking lot" because of the mass of cars that crammed here each night, has been somewhat eased with road improvements, but try to avoid driving at night. When you've had it with Branson, escape to nearby Table Rock Lake , a beautiful area offering hiking, biking, camping, water skiing and world class fishing.
St. Louis Missouri
Perched just below the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, three hundred miles south of Chicago and north of Memphis, cosmopolitan ST LOUIS (pronounced, whatever any song might say, as Lewis) owes its vaguely European air to its history and developed cultural infrastructure. Any city capable of producing two of the twentieth century's greatest poets - T.S. Eliot and Chuck Berry - probably has a lot going for it.

St Louis was founded in 1764 by the French fur trader Pierre Laclede , but the American immigration that followed its sale to the US under the Louisiana Purchase all but extinguished the refinement it had gained during French and Spanish rule. It subsequently became crucial as the major gateway for pioneers on the wagon trails westward. Transportation first steamboats, then trains and now air haulage has long been the basis of its considerable industrial strength. However, St Louis has not always had an easy ride. Downtown reached a nadir during the 1970s, but the years since then have seen a remarkable turnaround, with attractions on the revitalized riverfront including the magnificent Gateway Arch and the restored warehouses of Lacledes Landing .

Try not to leave without sampling the outlying districts. To the west lie arty Central West End and studenty University or U City , on either side of prodigious Forest Park with its museums and playing fields. The blue-collar southside features the markets, antique shops and jazz pubs of Soulard and the Italian shops and cafés of the Hill. Directly across the river in Illinois, East St Louis, once the stomping ground of jazz stars like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, has very little to offer visitors.

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