Our route to the Ozarks took us directly through St Louis, so we wanted to stop and check out the famous arch. Since it’s now designated as a national park, it was also an opportunity to get some new cancellation stamps in our National Park Passports. Collecting these stamps is a bit of a side hobby for us — we get them at every national park we visit.

By the time we got there, it was already 7:15 pm and the tram going up to the top of the arch was closed. We were still able to walk up to the arch and look at it from underneath. It’s a strangely sleek metallic structure situated right next to the Mississippi river which serves as the border between Illinois and Missouri. We have heard of it referred to as “the gateway to the west” but didn’t really know what that meant, exactly, since it’s located in the Midwest. Maybe at the time, the Mississippi river was considered to be the border between the east and west sides of the country.
We did learn that it was previously named the Jefferson Memorial Expansion before it was renamed to the Gateway Arch. We tried to find some more history about it — why it was built, and why it was located there — but there wasn’t much information readily available on the website or in the museum. There was some other history about the place, something relating to a courthouse, but we didn’t have time to delve into it.
The visitors’ center is a more modern looking building and includes a museum which is actually underground. We didn’t have time to look at the exhibits, since we still had several hours of driving ahead and it was getting late. But the architecture of it was kind of cool, as we realized when we were outside that the entire thing is actually underground.
The arch itself proved difficult to photograph from up close. We took a few artsy pictures and went back to the car to continue our trip.




