After slogging through heavy rain in St. Louis yesterday, we drove another hour south to Ste. Genevieve, on the Mississippi River floodplain. Founded by French settlers in 1740, the town had to be moved three miles upstream in 1785 due to severe flooding along the river.
Nevertheless, Ste. Genevieve is the oldest, continuously inhabited town in Missouri and is home to the largest concentration of French Colonial Architecture in the country. A fine museum introduces visitors to the history of French settlement and the historic section of town offers a pleasing mix of galleries, restaurants, retail establishments, hotels and B&Bs for visitors. Indeed, we are staying in the Audubon Hotel, named after the famous naturalist who, with a colleague, ran a mercantile store in St. Genevieve in the early 1800s.
The Ste. Genevieve Levee National Wildlife Refuge runs along the Mississippi River floodplain east of the city but trails, other than the levee trail, are not well established at this point. Today, we'll head into the St. Francois Mountains; details to follow.
