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ST. Louts, Missouri -- When President Thomas Jefferson acquired the vast new territory of the Louisiana Purchase, St. Louis, founded in the late 1760s near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, was the natural launching point for an exploratory expedition. So in May 1804, Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery set out from this city to map the sprawling new American wilderness.
At that point the city had a population of roughly 1,000. As it became the fulcrum for decades of expeditions and migrations west, rapid growth ensued. By the time of the Civil War, St. Louis was a great city: the nation's top river port, our largest flour producer, a ...