From the brothels of post-Civil War-era St. Louis to the streets of New Orleans' Storyville, this episode traces the history of prostitution along the Mississippi River — and the endless tug-of-war between tolerance, regulation, and suppression that has defined it. We start with Eliza Haycraft, a remarkable St. Louis woman who arrived penniless by
It seems to be in our nature to draw lines that separate us from this or that. Rivers offer a convenient way for us to draw some of those lines, those boundaries, especially big rivers. In this episode, I tell a few stories about how we’ve used the Mississippi River to draw political lines,
In 1849, St. Louisans must have wondered what they had done so wrong to deserve suffering through two terrible tragedies. Steamboats brought cholera to the city, triggering a deadly epidemic that would ultimately kill thousands of people. In the early waves of the epidemic, a steamboat fire on the levee got out of control
Last weekend, I hiked to Duck Island through a dust storm. That's not a sentence I ever expected to type. For one thing, Duck Island, as the name implies, is an island. It sits just downriver from the c0nfluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in Columbia Bottom Conservation Area and is usually best
The story of Dred and Harriet Scott's pursuit of freedom is one of the most significant in American history, but what do we know about their lives?
Introduction “First in booze, first in shoes, and last in the American League.” Those last place Browns are long gone, as are the shoe factories, but we still have the booze and a National League baseball team that is a perennial contender. St. Louis, my hometown, is great place to live and full
