St Louis

St. Louis is the second-largest city of Missouri. It is an independent city and does not belong to any province. Situated in east central part of the state on the Mississippi River, the city came into being in 1764. Auguste Chouteau set up a fur-trading post and Pierre Laclède Liguest, a New Orleans businessman, founded a town at the present site. They named the city after Louis XV of France and his patron saint, Louis IX. For almost three plus decades, the city was dominated by the Spanish people and was given back to France in 1803. St. Louis is the 18th largest city in the nation with a population of over 2.6 million. In 1849, the city was greatly damaged by the Great Fire. The city was also completely disintegrated by the Civil War. To add more to their misery the Cholera epidemic bruised the city not once but twice. Despite off all the damage the city survived violent strikes, race riots, and segregation in order to become "the gateway to the west" for American pioneers and aspiring musicians. St. Louis is an abode of first ice cream cone which was introduced to along with other new food items such as hot dogs, hamburgers, and iced tea at the 1904 World's Fair. St. Louis has the distinction of being the first American city to host Olympics in 1904.

The city also houses the first arched steel truss bridge in the world, the first university west of the Mississippi, and the first zoo to place animals in natural environments without bars. In 1847 and 1850 the city became a site of a landmark slave freedom case that tried to focus the national attention on the repercussions of slavery that finally promoted the Civil War. It is a very distressing but a fact that city housed some of the most awful Italian gangs in America, and also served as the site of nation's bloodiest murders. In the 20th century the city also hosted the largest World's Fair. Directly beneath the city of St. Louis, there exists complex system of caves. The entrances to these caves have been closed, which makes all the more difficult to explore them. Possibly due to this reason so many breweries thrived here in the 19th century. St. Louis is also home to the world's largest brewery, Anheuser Busch. St. Louis is also known for ghosts and bizarre haunted houses. The city is the focal area of major industries and transportation. It is one of the leading rail and trucking centers. The city’s airport and river docks are among the country's busiest. It is a hub of various manufacturing goods like chemicals, customer goods, automobiles and their accessories, electronic equipments, eatables, fabrics, shoes, paper, plastic, metal products, paints, soap, detergents, hardware, and pharmaceuticals. Also dubbed as Gateway to the West, the city’s major attraction is the Gateway Arch, which is the World’s tallest monument. The Gateway arch was constructed in 1965. Designed by Eero Saarinen it is 630 ft in height. It represents St. Louis as the gateway to the West. The city inhabits numerous ethnic communities from all parts of the globe. The worldwide communities include Bosnian (over 40,000), Asian, Latino, and Italian. The GLBT community of St. Louis ranks one of the top 10 in the nation for quality of gay life. The ecological positioning of the city makes it a comfortable city to live in. Commercial and economic developments are abundant here due to the city’s central location. The winters here are long and harsh and the summer is hot and humid. Spring and autumn are pleasant. In 1999, the city was ranked the fastest growing tourist city in America.