Illustrated map to promote Grant Trail in area

The Civil War travels of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant are well known in northeast and east-central Missouri, but his activities in the southeast part of the state have been sparsely promoted.

Four groups have joined forces to promote the U.S. Grant Trail from St. Louis to Cape Girardeau to the nation's legion of Civil War enthusiasts.

Greg Wolk, executive director of the Missouri Civil War Heritage Foundation in St. Louis, said $11,000 has been raised for the foundation to publish an illustrated map of that neglected story.

Wolk said the backers are the convention and visitors bureaus of Cape Girardeau and St. Louis, the Friends of Fort Davidson at Pilot Knob and the Missouri Division of Tourism.

He said 12,000 of the 24-by-27-inch maps will be published April 1, illustrating both ends of the Grant Trail and going to Civil War groups and other destinations across the country.

Wolk said color photos and copy boxes will send visitors "to De Soto, where there is a legend about Grant, Pilot Knob, Ironton and points between there and Cape, like Fredericktown, where there is a wealth of stuff about a battle in October 1861.

"John Wesley Powell helped build forts around Cape and later discovered the Grand Canyon, and Gen. Jeff Thompson, the Missouri Swamp Fox, had his headquarters on Crowley's Ridge near Bloomfield," Wolk said. "Crowley's Ridge had huge swamps on both sides, and Thompson trained his troops there and raided along the path of Highway 67 almost to St. Louis."

Noting Grant had been sent to St. Louis after graduating from West Point in 1843, Wolk said, "With the possible exceptions of Jesse James and Mark Twain, Grant is the most famous Missourian in the world."

He said the Grant National Historic Site in southwestern St. Louis, where the general owned property, is a popular attraction. Grant was president from 1869 to 1877.

"He intended to retire here [in Missouri], but he was elected president and things didn't work out," Wolk said.

He said most of Grant's travels between Cape Girardeau and St. Louis were by rail and Mississippi River steamboats, and that the general credited with winning the war for the Union was in Cape Girardeau from Aug. 28 to Sept. 2, 1861.

The foundation's website is mocivilwar.org.

Kelly Gettinger, cooperative marketing manager for the Division of Tourism in Jefferson City, Mo., said her department provided $3,325 for the map.

Gettinger said the money also will finance advertisements on civilwartraveler.com.

"A large part of the population really enjoys history, and this project spotlights the history part of tourism in Missouri," she said.

Cape Girardeau visitors bureau executive director Chuck Martin said he supported the initiative in part because it coincided with Missouri's Civil War Sesquicentennial, or 150th anniversary.

Martin said it's time for the St. Louis-Cape Girardeau trail to be touted.

"This new drive from Ironton and Fredericktown to Jackson, Cape and Island No. 10, where Grant commanded troops near New Madrid, will be a great way to point visitors in our direction," he said.