Today was a lot of driving. We started in Indiana. We drove across Illinois to Missouri. We toured the Gateway Arch National Park. Then we drove back across Illinois to Indiana. This is the definition of a whirlwind tour.
Our focus for the day was the Gateway Arch. This was the first full view of the Arch as we crossed the Mississippi River. It is an impressive structure.
There are several entrances to Gateway Arch National Park. This is the main entrance with a National Park sign.
Here is the entrance to the arch museum, theater, and tram as seen from “the front”. It is ironic, because it is here to remind us of people who came from the east to go west. However, you enter the park from the west.
The museum at the park traces the history of the westward expansion of the United States. A significant part of the museum tells the story of the construction of the arch. While the arch was completed in April 1965, the project began as an idea in the 1930s. It was approved in 1941 by the federal government as the Jefferson Expansion Memorial. It took that entire decade to get an approved proposal. Final design, construction bidding, and construction planning took another decade. Construction finally began in 1962. That was the year after the architect, Eero Saarinen, died. It was about 30 years from idea to completion.
We watched a movie about the construction of the arch that goes into great detail about how the arch required unique construction techniques because of its shape. The 3 dimensional relief below is a tribute to the various groups of people that worked on the project over the thirty years. Note the red ‘bridge’ near the top of the arch. The two sides of the arch were built independently, then they built scaffolding (the bridge spanning the two sides) in order to complete the arch. It is interesting to note that not a single life was lost during the entire construction.
After we watched the movie, we got in line to ride to the top of the arch. The elevator car is specially designed to fit in the curved shape of the arch. It consists of 8 ‘pods’, each holding up to 5 people in very close (duck your head and bump knees with other occupants) quarters. You need to be comfortable in tight spaces with minimal ‘personal space’ to ride to the top. You also need to have faith in the power source that drives the elevator 630 feet above the ground. In many places it would be a long wait if the power went out.
In spite of the car size, the track changes, and the risk of power failures, the ride was uneventful and even enjoyable.
Here we are at the top of the Gateway Arch. There is one panel up there that addresses the purpose of the Arch, the safety features built into the arch to protect against natural disasters, and facts about the view from the top.
The view from the top is breath taking. You can see through the small windows at the top of the arch. Though small, they still provide a very large view when you lean over. Looking to the east, you can see the Mississippi River and Illinois.
Looking to the southwest you can see Busch Stadium, St. Louis and far across Missouri. Looking westward and down, you can see The Gateway Arch National Park surrounded by downtown St. Louis. Looking outward to the west you can see a small portion of the trip that pioneers took to go west. At the bottom of the second photo below you can see the semicircular entrance to the Arch complex.
Almost directly below the arch is the other attraction at Gateway Arch National Park. It is the Old St. Louis Courthouse. It was the venue for the first phase of the Dred Scott case. It was also a site for one of the first cases for Women’s right to vote. It is incorporated into the National Park Service to recognize the complicated path followed to gain rights and freedoms for all people in the United States. Unfortunately, due to an ongoing reconstruction project, it was closed to visitors when we were there .
The Gateway Arch National Park is small and has a limited size and limited attractions. Some could argue that it is not of the same stature as large national parks with massive amounts of land and varied vistas. No matter where you stand on that issue, over a million people a year visit this National Park. It is well worth a visit, even though you can easily see it all in a single day.
We had planned to go to a popular restaurant after we saw the Arch. We braved the bitter cold and wind to walk about 15 minutes to the restaurant. We discovered it really is popular. The line at 1:30 in the afternoon was over an hour long. After waiting about ten minutes without moving very far, we decided to skip lunch in St. Louis. So we drove back across Illinois to our hotel in Evansville Indiana. We found a diner that had been in business since the 1960s and had a great meal there.
A lot of driving on a beautiful sunny day and good food for dinner made it a great day.