Memory Lane Inc. - West from Missouri

Memory Lane Inc. - West from Missouri - Pamela K. Boyer

Memory Lane Genealogy

West from Missouri
Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL

In the 1800s, Missouri, the "Show Me" state, was a jumping-off place for travel west. The Santa Fe Trail began in Missouri, and ended in New Mexico Territory. The Oregon Trail went from Independence to the promise of a new life in the West. Many persecuted Mormons left Missouri and went north to Iowa to take the Mormon Trail west to a new home in Utah. The Butterfield Overland Mail route led from St. Louis to Fort Smith, Arkansas; El Paso, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; and Los Angeles and San Francisco, California.

In the 1900s, new factors caused westward migration from Missouri. The dust bowl caused some Missouri farmers to take Route 66 to hopes for a better life on the West Coast. Factories and new Army and Air bases sprang up in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, California, Oregon, and Washington as a result of World War II, providing large numbers of new jobs to be filled. As Missouri's timber and mining industries wound down, new resources in the West attracted Missourians who had made their living this way for generations.

This lecture focuses on why emigrants converged on Missouri in the 1800s to leave for points west. It explores the importance of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers for transportation of goods, and the role of St. Louis and Missouri as "the Gateway to the West." Why did they leave from Missouri? What did they hope to find in the West? How many actually went west in the 1800s? What kinds of records did they leave behind, and where can these be found? This lecture answers these questions, and more, about further migration in the 1900s.