How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America

2: Across the Wide Mississippi

39| The business interests of this continent have been developed in a series of circles, smaller circles being formed as the necessity has arisen out of larger ones. Fifty years ago the circles environed ports of supply, which were few in number. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and St. Louis were the only big trading places. St. Louis did all the heavy mid-continent trade; then Chicago sprung up and soon monopolized the northwestern part of it. Westward Kansas City grew and appropriated a section for itself. Within the last ten years Denver has become a point of supply for the larger portion of the central Rocky Mountain region and divided the southwestern business until Albuquerque loomed up. . . . Thus it can be seen how the country becomes subdivided into smaller circles as regards its commerce and how points of supply rapidly rise into importance as a country settles up and develops. The location of these new centers of business are controlled by two factors—through railroad communication and being approximately the geographical center of a newly developing region. —George H. tinker, A Land of Sunshine: Flagstaff and Its Surroundings (1887) To have an immense production of exchangeable commodities, to force from nature the most she can be made to yield, and send it east and west by the cheapest routes to the dearest markets, making one’s city a centre of trade and raising the price of its real estate—this, which might not CHAPter tWo Across the Wide Mississippi | CHAPter tWo 40 have seemed a glorious consummation to Isaiah or Plato, is preached by western newspapers as a kind of religion. —James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (1912) All roads lead to Winnipeg. . . . It is the gateway through which all the commerce of the east and west, and the north and south must flow. . . . It is destined to become one of the greatest distributing and commercial centers of the continent. —Chicago Tribune (1911) the common image of William Clark is a dauntless explorer. He is the explorer in a canoe, on foot, on horseback, parleying with indians, probing the sources of rivers, testing treacherous mountain passes, noting the changing landscape. on road signs that mark the parts of his route to the Pacific he stands next to Meriwether Lewis as both peer intently westward. on the emblem of the Lewis and Clark Centennial exposition, Portland, oregon , 1905 world’s fair, he strides toward the setting sun, arms linked with Lady Liberty, Miss Columbia, or some such allegorical beauty representing the new nation. in fact, William Clark’s life was more closely linked to St. Louis than to the Montana mountains that are now Lewis and Clark national Forest or to westernwaterwaysliketheClarkForkoftheColumbiaRiver .St.Louiswasthestarting point for his trek to the Pacific ocean in 1804–6 and his home as a federal official after his return. in 1807 Clark accepted appointment as superintendent of indian affairs for the vast Louisiana territory and settled in St. Louis. President Madison appointed him governor of Missouri territory in 1813, and President Monroe reappointed him through 1821, the year of Missouri statehood . For those crucial fifteen years he was one of the city’s most prominent residents. As indian superintendent and governor, his task was to keep peace with the indian nations of the Missouri Valley and manage the trade in furs. He worked to protect tribes against squatters, maintained trade through government agents, and used diplomacy to keep Upper Mississippi tribes neutral in the War of 1812. William Clark’s St. Louis was the epicenter for change from an old urban world to a new. the colonial system in western north America crested in the early nineteenth century. european conflicts pushed France out of its last holdings on the continent soon after 1800. Spanish expansion essentially stopped except for gradual growth and infill in Upper California. Among the european empires, only the thinly scattered Russians and the newly consolidated British fur-trading enterprise of the Hudson’s Bay Company were still expanding their far western presence. St. Louis, the small city that grew from the spot where the Gateway Arch now casts its shadow, dated from 1764, when Pierre Laclède came north from ACross tHe WiDe MississiPPi | 41 new orleans to set up a fur-trading base. the French-speaking settlement was an imperial outpost like many others. it picked up French settlers from the illinois country as news arrived that...