Old St. Ferdinand Shrine

One of the oldest Catholic parishes west of the Mississippi River began in this spot in Florissant, Missouri. French settlers founded the settlement in seventeen eighty-six and built their first chapel three years later. The current stone church dates to eighteen twenty-one.

A convent arrived two years before it, founded by Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, the French nun who set up the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi. The full complex, church, convent, rectory, and schoolhouse, now stands preserved on the National Register of Historic Places. What survives here is a fragment of colonial French Missouri, built when Florissant was still a frontier crossroads between the Spanish crown and the young American republic.