Saint Clair, Missouri: Traveler's Repose

Before it had a proper name, this Franklin County crossroads was called Traveler's Repose, a stagecoach stop on the road between Saint Louis and Springfield. The name fit, though locals later joked it sounded more like a cemetery or a tavern. When the Missouri Pacific Railroad arrived in eighteen fifty-nine, the town got a new identity.

Railroad engineers renamed it Saint Clair, honoring a railroad official. With rail service came a reliable mail stop, commerce, and eventually Route Sixty-Six, which ran through town in the nineteen twenties. Saint Clair today is a Franklin County community of roughly five thousand, about forty-five miles southwest of Saint Louis, still serving travelers on Interstate Forty-Four just as it once served those on horseback.