Cape began as a river city

Cape Girardeau began as a Mississippi River trading post, and more than two centuries later visitors are still drawn to the riverbank.

The city's Convention and Visitors Bureau uses the river as a marketing tool. Even its tourism slogan -- "Where the river turns a thousand tales" -- is tied to the unceasing waterway.

The nation's first highways were rivers. It's what drew Frenchman Jean Baptiste Girardot to the area as early as the 1730s. He took advantage of a natural harbor created by the river and set up a trading post near Cape Rock.

But it was French Canadian Louis Lorimier who, armed with a Spanish land grant handed out in 1793, founded the town of Cape Girardeau in 1806.

The town wouldn't be here without the river. "It is here because there is a wide, flat riverfront with a gentle incline," said Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University.

That made it easier for oxen and horses to pull supplies to and from the river, he said.

Ferries operated between Cape Girardeau and Illinois almost nonstop from the early 1800s until the late 1920s, offering the only way to travel across the wide river.

Today's modern steamboats dock here, reminders of when steamboats routinely stopped at the city's riverfront.

Even with the steamboats docking here in the 1800s, Cape Girardeau remained a small town.

As late as 1860, fewer than 2,700 people lived in the town.

Steamboats were idled each winter when the river froze. Passengers, however, could still take a stagecoach to Fredericktown, Mo., and Pilot Knob, Mo., where they could then catch a train to St. Louis.

For many years the city was represented by steamboats bearing the name "Cape Girardeau."

The Eagle Packet Co. of St. Louis had three boats named for the city. The last, christened at Cape Girardeau in 1924, traveled up and down the river until 1932. By 1937, most of the steamboats were out of business. Goods were being shipped by rail and truck.

By 1900, the city had grown to 4,815 people.

Railroads ended isolation

But Nickell said Cape Girardeau was largely an isolated town until the advent of the railroads.

Prominent Cape Girardeau resident Louis Houck brought the first railroad to Cape Girardeau, overseeing construction of a 15-mile rail line from Delta to the river city.

The last link in the tracks was completed an hour before the midnight, Dec. 31, 1880, deadline set by the federal government.

The first train into Cape Girardeau arrived at 2 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1881. No one greeted it. Townsfolk, believing the rail line couldn't be completed on time, had gone to bed.

From 1880 to 1905, Houck was responsible for construction of 500 miles of rail lines. He built a rail system north from Cape Girardeau to Farmington and Ste. Genevieve and south to Morehouse, Parma, Gideon, Kennett and Caruthersville.

But by the turn of the century, Cape Girardeau still had no direct rail connection with St. Louis or Memphis.

That changed with the Frisco Railroad, which began providing regular passenger service connecting Cape Girardeau to St. Louis and Memphis in June 1904. The railroad was extended to Cape Girardeau at that time to provide easier transportation to and from the World's Fair in St. Louis, Nickell said.

"It really did extend the community," Nickell said. Until then, the fastest travel to St. Louis -- 22 hours -- was by steamboat.

Trains made it a three- or four-hour trip, he said.

The heyday of passenger train travel was in the 1920s, Nickell said.

More than 60 years of Frisco passenger train service at Cape Girardeau ended on Sept. 17, 1965, prompting headlines in the Southeast Missourian newspaper. "It marked the end of an era that helped bring great prosperity to Cape Girardeau and the rich Southeast Missouri territory," the newspaper reported in its Sept. 18, 1965, edition.

By then, car and trucks had become the popular mode of transportation. But early in the century it was a bumpy ride.

"The roads were full of ruts," said Nickell. "They were all gravel and mud."

Even as late as 1929, you couldn't leave Cape Girardeau without traveling on gravel roads, he said.

In the 1930s, concrete highways made automobile travel much smoother. But many of Cape Girardeau's city streets remained gravel. Some streets weren't paved until the 1950s, Nickell said.

It wasn't until August 1972 that the last stretch of I-55 between Cape Girardeau and St. Louis was completed. Then-Gov. Warren Hearnes cut the ribbon at the dedication near Perryville, Mo. The ceremony drew more than 1,500 people.

"It's meant a great deal to us," said former Cape Girardeau city manager J. Ronald Fischer. "It just kind of put Cape Girardeau on the map."

Unprofitable trolleys

Only a few decades earlier, street cars provided transportation in the city. Trolley cars operated from 1893 to 1934, but various owners never showed a profit on what became a 4-mile line through Cape Girardeau's downtown area, extending as far west as West End Boulevard.

Electric streetcar service ended in Cape Girardeau on Aug. 10, 1934.

The Cape Girardeau Regional Airport opened near Scott City in 1947, having previously served as a World War II Army flight training school known as Harris Field.

"They had about 30 airplanes in the air at the same time," said local pilot John T. Seesing. "They just landed on a grass field."

Seesing remembers Cape Girardeau before there was an airport. In 1939, a Piper Cub with floats used the Mississippi River as a landing strip. "It was the first airplane I saw that close," he recalled.

Various commuter lines have served Cape Girardeau dating back to the 1950s when Ozark Airlines started making flights to and from the city.

Seesing said the airport remains a vital part of the area's transportation system. For some it's the "front door" to the city, he said.