St. Joseph Is Home to Where James Once Roamed

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. â€”  Local historian Sheridan Logan’s voice gets a touch of melancholy when he talks about his hometown, here in the heart of the heartland.

“The young people mostly go away, so there hasn’t been enough new to take over the old,� he says. “So the whole town is sort of like a museum.�

That pretty well sums it up. This once-lively frontier town of fur trappers, Westward adventurers and Pony Express riders thrived during the 1800s.

Now St. Joe, as the locals like to call their city, is mostly a place to visit if you happen to be on your way to another destination.

But it is a worthwhile stop if you’re interested in Western Americana, Victorian mansions or eclectic museums.

A horse-and-outlaw nostalgia predominates in this historic town of 76,000 on the bluffs of the Missouri River, 50 miles north of Kansas City. It’s “where the Pony Express began and Jesse James ended.�

The first Pony Express rider galloped out from St. Joseph on April 3, 1860. He had applied for the hazardous job from a help-wanted ad that asked for “young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week.�

Hostile Indians

The teen-age riders, who had to contend with hostile Indians and adverse weather, changed their horses every 10 to 15 miles and rode about 10 m.p.h. for an average of 75 to 100 miles a day.

The mail they carried was destined for Sacramento, nearly 2,000 miles west. It usually arrived 10 days later. The cost was $5 for a half-ounce letter.

All this is explained at the Pony Express Museum in the original stables that once held 200 horses. The museum provides a 12-minute historical film, assorted displays and exhibits from old photographs to period blacksmith and wheelwright shops.

Two blocks away a small wood-frame building attracts visitors who want to see the house where Jesse James was killed on April 3, 1882.

The notorious “king of the outlaws� was living there with his wife and two children under an assumed name when he was shot from behind by a member of his gang for the $10,000 reward.

Over the years, souvenir hunters have snitched small hunks of plaster from the original bullet hole in the wall so that the spot measures nearly six by three inches (it’s now covered with glass for protection).

Somewhat at odds in ambiance is the sentimental cross-stitch sampler, “God Bless Our Home,� crafted by James’ mother, which hangs above it.

Next door the four-story Patee House Museum, an 1858 luxury hotel and the Pony Express headquarters in the 1860s, overshadows the James house.

Two floors are devoted to exhibits representing early communications and transportation, including an 1860 Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad wood-burning steam locomotive, horse-drawn buggies and the replica of an early railway depot and mail car.

A large section is devoted to recreated shops of the late 19th Century, among them a barbershop, post office, bank and the office of a dentist, Walter Cronkite Sr., the former news anchorman’s father.

The 1854 Buffalo Saloon recreated here provides soft drinks, popcorn and the music of ragtime composer Scott Joplin, played by a local pianist.

In 1850 city founder Joseph Robidoux (the town was not named after him, but after his patron saint) built seven row houses for newcomers.

Now known as Robidoux Row (it’s on the National Register of Historic Places), the four remaining units have been restored and partially refurnished, some with original Robidoux memorabilia.

Other Attractions

Depending on your tastes, you’ll other museums here such as:

--The 1881 Kember Home, a 15-room Queen Anne mansion with seven fireplaces, chock full of Victorian furnishings and memorabilia, from old-time glass baby bottles in the birthing room to original funeral notices from the 1850s and ‘60s (funerals were still held in the home on a doily-covered oak hallway table).

--The St. Joseph Museum, a 43-room, three-floor 1879 Gothic mansion with Tiffany stained-glass windows. It holds a fine collection of Indian artifacts and local and natural history exhibits.

--The Missouri Theater, a 1927 movie palace with a Persian/Egyptian decor, renovated in the late 1970s for $1.25 million. It serves as St. Joseph’s home for the performing arts.

--The 1881 Schuster-Rader Mansion, restored and furnished with Victorian antiques as a tour house and B&B.;

--The Missouri Valley Trust Co., a beautiful 1860 bank with massive Victorian wood carvings on the walls, ceiling and cashier cages, plus tile floors, leaded glass windows, even a fireplace in the lobby. The vault walls are reinforced with vertical railroad rails.

St. Joseph also offers a few off-the-wall attractions. “You can even have a tour of a funeral home here,� says historian Logan, “but they just don’t advertise it.�

A bit too macabre? Then how about a tour of the Psychiatric Museum, one of five in the nation? In a former hospital ward, the museum chronicles mental health treatment and techniques spanning 400 years.

Among dozens of relics, devices and contraptions on exhibit, the museum holds a collection of reproductions of bygone psychiatric “treatment� devices, such as the 17th-Century Bath of Surprise, where the patient was dropped from an overhead scaffolding (like a hangman’s) into a huge wooden tub filled with ice water (ancient shock therapy).

And the 19th-Century “Tranquilizer Chair,� where disturbed patients were confined (sometimes for six months or longer) so that doctors could perform bloodletting or water dousing, when as many as 100 buckets of ice water would be dumped on them to bring them “back to their senses.�

St. Joseph also is the home of Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour, Big Chief school tablets and Stetson hats.

The Stetson hat factory, in an industrial park about a mile south of the city limits, offers free tours where you can watch the likes of an Indiana Jones hat (a Stetson) evolve along a series of assembly lines.

Afterward, of course, you can stop in at its outlet and buy a hat, maybe a Western straw or a suede cloth cap.

For more information on travel to St. Joseph, contact the St. Joseph Area Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 1394, St. Joseph, Mo. 64502, (816) 232-4461.