Greetings Family and Friends,
St Louis, Missouri is known as the “Gateway to the West” as it was the jumping off point for westward bound wagon trains back in the decades prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroads. Nowadays it is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the iconic Gateway Arch within the Gateway Arch National Park. To go to the top of the arch, you need to get in a box, one of eight boxes or capsules or cars (the latter two descriptions are used by the park) that make up a tram that goes up to the observation deck at the apex of the arch.
These tram cars are definitely on the small side – an internal diameter of 5 ft. With a door that has a height of 4 ft and a width of 2½ ft. Each has five seats. Thankfully when assigning visitors to cars they do so by party and they try to avoid combining parties. Visitors are also explicitly asked if they have issues with going up or down stairs, claustrophobia, or heights. I rode by myself as a party of one. I cannot imagine riding with four other adults – I might well then develop claustrophobia.
The ride up to observation deck takes four minutes. Once at the observation deck you have ten minutes which goes by quickly. The viewing is through narrow windows that are roughly 7 in (height) by 27 in (width). And you have to lean across an upward sloping ledge if you want to put your face or camera close to a window. This can put a bit of stress on one’s gut if one has one which I do! But the views as you can see from the photos in the gallery below are quite spectacular. The ride down from the observation deck is a bit quicker at three minutes. Of course, the views of the arch from the ground aren’t bad either.
Also within the national park is the Old Courthouse whose cornerstone was laid in 1839. Later in the 1800s remodels occurred with the courthouse being used for court proceedings until 1930. The City of St Louis turned it over to the Federal Government in 1940. During its tenure as a courthouse it housed 7 to 12 courtrooms to handle city and county cases. Its highest profile cases were the Dred Scott cases of 1847 and 1850 as well as the Virginia Minor case of 1872.
Within the Old Courthouse are informational rooms with exhibits and three court rooms. The first court pictured in the gallery below and housed on the first floor is the “See You in Court”. This is a courtroom that is set up to be an educational introduction to who are the participants in a court case and where they are to be found within a courtroom. Within the courtroom you can move freely around. On the second floor are Circuit Courts No. 13 and No. 4. The former has been restored to its appearance around 1910 while the latter has been restored to what it would have looked like in the 1850s. In the No. 13 court you can also move freely about whereas in the No. 4 court you are restricted to an alcove off the entryway.
The gallery also contains a few pics of the Old Cathedral. While not part of the Gateway Arch National Park it is adjacent to the park. It is open to the public but unfortunately its hours are a bit more limited and I was thus unable to visit the interior. I love the image of the cathedral within the arch captured in the last photo.
That’s it for now. As always, feel free to share this link with anyone who expresses an interest. Next stop will be at the big city at the other side of Missouri.
Until later,
Papi