On the Missouri map Route 36 may look unremarkable but to the locals it is now known as ‘The Way of the American Genius’. St Louis-based travel writer Sue McCarthy and husband Kevin set out to discover why.
Although it’s only 195 miles long, Highway 36, which spans the northern part of this mid-western state, encompasses an amazing array of sites associated with remarkable men. Beginning at the Mississippi riverside town of Hannibal, hometown of Mark Twain, and ending at St Joseph, where notorious outlaw Jesse James was gunned down, the highway also passes by the homes or hometowns of movie magic-maker Walt Disney, esteemed World War I General John J Pershing and megastore magnet JC Penney – as well as the place where sliced bread was first made.
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in a display in Hannibal’s Mark Twain Boyhood Home Museum Gallery
Predictably, most of the tourist sites of Hannibal are dedicated to its most-famous resident, one-time Mississippi riverboat pilot Samuel Clemens, who found international fame and fortune as prolific novelist and short-story writer Mark Twain. We toured his boyhood home, museum and interpretive centre as well as the homes dedicated to two of his most famous characters, Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn. Then our stay was made complete by cruising down the Mississippi on the Mark Twain paddle-wheeler and overnighting in the Garth Woodside Mansion B&B, where Twain frequently stayed as the guest of his friend Col John H Garth, reputedly the inspiration for his most-famous fictional character, Tom Sawyer.
Other Hannibal resident of note were the ‘Unsinkable’ Molly Brown, heroine of the Titanic, whose birthplace and museum you can visit, and Bill Lear, the inventor of the Lear Jet.
FENCE PAINTING AND FROG JUMPING
Hannibal Street Scene
The most festive time to visit Hannibal is during its Annual National Tom Sawyer Days when there will be such tributes to fictional Twain events as a National Fence Painting Competition, frog-jumping contest and Tom Sawyer & Becky Thatcher look-a-like competition.
Heading west, we stopped in Macon for a delicious lunch of Kansas City Strip with onion rings and lobster with penne noodles at AJ’s Eat & Drink … The Steakhouse before continuing to Walt Disney’s hometown, Marceline. Here the Main Street reputedly became the inspiration for Main Street USA at both Disneyland and Disney World, and the Disney Museum is a reminder to ‘never forget that Walt Disney was a simple farm boy who grew up to become the keeper of childhood magic’.
Next came Laclede, where we toured the boyhood home of World War I six-star General John J Pershing and the Prairie Mound School, which he attended, and then Chillicothe, best-known for its 22 beautiful murals but also home to a museum that reminded us of the famous American expression ‘It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread’. That’s because its displays include a local 1928 machine that was the first to slice bread, as well as a dial phone invented in Macon. Today, nearby Hamilton, the hometown of merchandising tycoon JC Penney, is best-known – at least by quilting enthusiasts – for its large Missouri Star Quilt Co shop.
Our final stop, St Joseph, right on the Kansas border, is a popular destination for its Pony Express Museum, which salutes the heroic horsemen who delivered the post from the town to the Pacific coast during 1860-61. The city is also the site of the atmospheric Jesse James House, where you can view the bullet hole left in the wall when he was shot in the back in 1885 by fellow gang member Robert Ford.
Next door, the Patee House Hotel has been turned into a museum of memorabilia, which includes an antique Carousel that I couldn’t resist riding. As we returned to our home base in St Louis, I recalled a quote from Mark Twain: “Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.” That’s certainly not the case along Missouri’s Route 36.
