This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 14, 2011 - Today as St. Louisans lift a glass to toast Stan Musial on the eve of his Medal of Freedom honors, and as they wish their loved ones a Happy Valentine's Day, there is also the city's birthday to celebrate.
Happy 247th birthday, St. Louis! The city was founded on Feb. 14, 1764.
The weather was warming up that day so fur trader Pierre Liguest Laclede, then 35, and a group of workers paddled over from the Illinois country and began clearing trees to lay out the first three streets for the fur trading post that became St. Louis. Earlier, Laclede, a Frenchman from a fur trapping area of the French Pyrenees, had chosen the commanding site on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, just 18 miles south of the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
This morning, members of the La Societe Francaise de Saint Louis were to place a floral wreath on Laclede's bronze statue, which stands just west of City Hall on Market Street. Many groups are planning bigger celebrations in three years when the city turns 250. For generations La Societe has faithfully marked the birthday, no matter its number.
Laclede was the exploring partner in the fur trading company Maxent, Laclede and Company. In 1763 the French crown granted that company the right to the Indian fur trade in the Upper Mississippi Valley.
That November, Laclede ventured from New Orleans upstream on the Mississippi River to the French settlement of Fort de Chartres in the Illinois country. He spent the early winter there assisted by Auguste Chouteau, who was just 14. Auguste was the son of Laclede's companion, Marie Therese Chouteau.
French Canadians, in nearby Illinois communities where two generations had pioneered, helped the pair scout a site for a fur trading post. They ventured as far north as the Missouri and Illinois rivers. The bottom land of the Illinois country was not considered perhaps because Laclede had heard the news the land had just been shifted from France to England.
By mid-February ice flows on the Mississippi River had diminished and travel was easier. On Feb. 14 Laclede led his party of 30 men to clear the trees at the site that is now part of the Gateway Arch grounds. However, its terrain was quite different then. Laclede found a gently sloping site with limestone outcroppings. The flat surface we walk across today was artificially created in the 1950s and 1960s to hide railroad lines in a tunnel parallel to the river.
Laclede laid out and named three streets. He returned to Fort de Chartres and left young Chouteau to oversee the development. At first the men slept on platforms that were six or seven feet high above ground to protect them from "wild beasts," according to Chouteau.
By that June the company had built a few buildings and within the year a fine white stone company headquarters.
Laclede was born in a stone house in the mountain village of Bedous, in the Bearne district of southern France in 1729, near some of the highest Pyrenees mountains. In his boyhood, the Laclede family home was a half-hour hike from the Spanish border. Today the border is farther south. The wooded Berne region was known for wild game. (Berne means bear in French.) Laclede grew up knowing about trapping and fur trading.
His father, also named Pierre Laclede, was a lawyer and regional official at the Parliament of Navarre. His older brother was a lawyer and a member the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Pau, the largest city in that area. Laclede arrived in America during the French and Indian War and had lived in New Orleans about a decade before coming upriver.
On a visit to Bedous several years ago, we found that the residents are proud of Laclede. A provincial Michelin Green Guide lists the town only because Laclede founded St. Louis.
In the late 1760s, after French residents in present-day Illinois and Indiana got the news that their land had been ceded to England many were alarmed. Many French-Canadian fur trappers, farmers and miners whose families had lived a few generations in French towns from Vincennes to Cahokia and Kaskaskia left British rule behind and moved to the high ground of St. Louis, according to records in Alvord and Carter's "The Critical Period, the New Regime, Trade and Politics," Illinois Historical Collections Vol. X.
By 1766, 40 families lived in the village of St. Louis.
Unknown to most French settlers at the time of the founding, land west of the Mississippi had been granted to Spain. Eventually the Spanish military took control. In 1769 most French-speaking male residents had to take an oath of allegiance to Spain. In speech and customs the growing village of St. Louis remained French except for a few Spanish administrators and their aides.
Laclede did not live to see his St. Louis flourish. He died at 48, in November 1778, while traveling along the Mississippi near the mouth of the Arkansas River. Laclede's four children by Marie Therese Chouteau -- and their half-brother Auguste Chouteau -- were among the leaders of the settlement. Marie Therese Chouteau, most of her children and the family until the ninth generation are buried in Section 13 of Calvary Cemetery in north city.
As noted in the "Napoleon Exhibition" now at the Missouri History Museum, in 1803 France's Emperor Napoleon got Louisiana Territory back just long enough to sell it to Thomas Jefferson.
Then, St. Louis entered the United States.
Patricia Rice is a freelance writer in St. Louis.