![]() A large-screen video discusses how Western movies and TV shows have popularized romantic perceptions of the West over the generations. The New Frontiers gallery explores how people settled and lived in the West, the myths that became the West’s cultural legacy, and how industrial innovation and the railroads changed St. “We’re Still Here,” a bank of touch screens playing interviews with Native Americans, reflects contemporary concerns about suicides, diabetes, poverty and the desire to pass on ancestral traditions. In Manifest Destiny, exhibits focus on the quest to push westward, conflicts with Native peoples and annexation of Texas. The Jefferson’s Vision gallery focuses on the $15 million Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the young republic, and Lewis & Clark Expedition. A touch screen display sheds light on French culture, with videos on language, music and even a step-by-step demonstration of how to make a pork-and-apple pie. Visitors can sit in a pirogue (dugout canoe), the kind used for travel between St. ![]() Louis gallery, museum-goers learn about trade with the Osage people, who supplied buffalo hides and deerskins in exchange for guns, ammunition and knives. Six themed galleries take visitors through 201 years of history, from the city’s founding by French fur merchant Pierre Laclede in 1764 to the building of the iconic Gateway Arch, completed in 1965. Louis and the East, allowing visitors to trace pioneers’ journeys to the West. On the museum’s mezzanine level, a terrazzo floor shows a map of North America with historic trails from St. Happily for pedestrians, a greenway land bridge aids access between downtown and the newly landscaped Arch grounds, creating a lid over highway traffic that visitors once had to deal with. The entrance to the underground museum/visitor center, once reached via stairways at the Arch’s legs, faces the Old Courthouse, also part of the national park. ![]() Open since July 3, the free-admission Museum at the Gateway Arch, which replaces the outdated and smaller Museum of Westward Expansion, is part of the just-completed, four-year project that has transformed the grounds of Gateway Arch National Park, formerly called Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Interactive touch screens and compelling video make this crowd pleaser even more user-friendly, sweeping visitors up in the saga of the wide-open, rough-and-tumble American West. ![]() Louis’ newest museum, oversized murals, larger-than-life photos and jumbo digital maps tell the story of a great Mississippi River city and its role in our nation’s settlement. History fans will find much to cheer about at this sparkling addition to the downtown St. ![]()
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