Mississippi River Tales mural
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The man to the right of this panel is Louis Houck, responsible for bringing the first railroad to Cape Girardeau. In addition to being a railroad builder, Houck was a lawyer, historian and author. Houck had a six-month deadline in which to build the first rail line from Delta to Cape Girardeau. The workers ran out of track about 1,000 feet from Cape Girardeau, but Houck was determined to make the Dec. 31, 1880, deadline so he ordered the train to run to the end of the uncompleted track so the workers could tear up the rails behind the train and complete the track into the city. According to stories, the train came into Cape Girardeau three minutes before the deadline approached.
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President William Howard Taft visited Cape Girardeau on Oct. 26, 1909. He arrived with a 16-boat flotilla carrying cabinet members, Congressmen, governors, judges, dignitaries and river commissioners that came down the river to publicize the need to stabilize the river channel. Taft spoke to a crowd of 25,000 from the steps of the new Academic Hall on the college campus.
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The biggest fire in the history of Cape Girardeau was on March 15, 1916. A steamboat whistle awakened the city that morning to the fire that began south of Broadway and destroyed the Terminal Hotel, the Buckner-Ragsdale store, the Frisco Railroad and the Riverview Hotel.
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Because the Mississippi River was wider and slower in the early 1900s than it is today, it could freeze over in periods of cold weather. During the winter of 1918, the river was frozen for several weeks. Some people actually walked across the frozen surface of the river, and others drove a team and wagon or an automobile across it.
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