Missouri Journal

Arrow Rock What Time is This Place

Posted at July 26, 2006 14:07

By Arthur Mehrhoff

When an old friend who shares my community design and preservation interests visited me last summer, I took him to see celebrated Arrow Rock, the first Missouri town named as one of America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

This artifact in scenic Saline County lived up to its reputation as Missouri’s timepiece of preservation, but numerous for-sale signs made me think about the future of Arrow Rock’s past, along with our own — probably because the past seems present in Arrow Rock, population seventy-nine.

As Friends of Arrow Rock Executive Director Kathy Borgman says regarding local industry, “Preservation is it.” It wasn’t always like that. Arrow Rock, named for the abundant supply of flint, which attracted American Indian tribes, seemed to be on the cusp of Missouri life before the Civil War. It’s located about twenty miles north of Boonville near the Missouri River on rich, black alluvial soil that Lewis and Clark lyrically described in their journals as “butifull counterey … interspursed with prairies and timber alternetly.”

At the edge of the prairie, it quickly became an important ferry-crossing on the Missouri River between Saint Charles and Independence, transforming Arrow Rock into a bustling commercial center of one thousand people just before the Civil War. Its frontier energy attracted ambitious and talented people like Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham, and the environment they created still evokes their lively presence. A sympathetic observer can crack the code here and release the past, like an heirloom seed that germinates one hundred years later.

Today, Arrow Rock is literally off the beaten path. The ever-restless Missouri River migrated nearly a mile away; riverboats gave way to railroads which gave way to state highways and the Interstate. Although the main road, Missouri Route 41, doesn’t go directly through town, Arrow Rock still seems to call visitors.

Traveling to Arrow Rock felt like entering a decompression chamber from the constant yada-yada of modern life as I drove through fertile farmland still unblemished by billboards. Even the rubble-stone foundation and covered bridge walkway of the Visitor Center at Arrow Rock State Park evoke antebellum America.

The Visitor Center in Arrow Rock State Historic Site offers the ideal opportunity to orient yourself. Browse through a copy of Michael Dickey’s Arrow Rock: Crossroads of the Missouri Frontier in the bookstore to get your historical bearings. Amble leisurely to the historic Huston Tavern, the fascinating Friends of Arrow Rock museum, Main Street stores, and workshops that still resemble scenes from a Bingham painting, on up to the nationally recognized Lyceum Theatre. That little tour through town offers the right speed and scale for stepping — not driving — back in time.

Arrow Rock has acquired quite a pedigree over the years. Dr. Tim Bauman, an anthropologist researching Arrow Rock archeology, noted “the historic preservation movement [in Missouri] began in Arrow Rock.” The Daughters of the American Revolution convinced the State of Missouri to buy the historic Huston Tavern and establish Arrow Rock State Historic Site in 1926. Their efforts reflected the emergence of Colonial Williamsburg as the model for historic preservation in America after The Great War.

Devoted preservationists established the Friends of Arrow Rock in the late Fifties. The organization became the gold standard for preservation in Missouri and continues its efforts to this day. Restoration of the George Caleb Bingham Home, now a Historic House Museum, began in 1964; the federal government designated it as a National Historic Landmark in 1968. The entire incorporated town of thirty-five acres was placed on the National Register in the Seventies. Many Missouri towns are beginning to understand what Arrow Rock achieved.

And therein lies a problem. People constantly reinvent meanings, continually valuing and devaluing the past. What does Arrow Rock do after success? It possesses considerable name recognition and has established high standards over several generations. What of the next generation? Although I learned that the for-sale signs were no longer there as the properties have sold, Arrow Rock still faces another uncertain transition in adapting to the flow of American life.

For example, only two children under twenty-one live in Arrow Rock, a common situation in many small Missouri towns. The quiet intimacy of the town may seem too quiet to teens. Mary Duncan, one of the proprietors of the Huston Tavern, also notes that most residents are now retirees, and many property owners live elsewhere.

The river of public resources and attention may also be shifting once again. Public treasures like historic Arrow Rock can no longer rely on federal and state governments. Mike Dickey, site administrator for Arrow Rock State Historic Site, mentioned that the state sales tax for parks and historic sites originally enacted in 1984 faces a tough renewal challenge. Resources depend upon what people value, and that may ultimately be Arrow Rock’s greatest challenge.

Attendance at many living history sites, including Colonial Williamsburg, has declined dramatically in the past two decades. Some observers blame the lack of history education in schools, mind-numbing television and video games, and the general inability of younger people to sit still without being entertained (what my Grandma Rockey would call sitzfleisch). Richard Forry, field operations coordinator of the Northern Missouri Historic District for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, cites a cultural shift away from heritage appreciation.

Other observers offer more immediate and tangible causes for declining visitor attendance. Mary Duncan of Huston Tavern cited an increasing lack of discretionary income. People may be looking around Arrow Rock, but not buying as much or as often. Kathy Borgman sent me a newspaper article which examined the impacts of airline deregulation on American travel patterns, increasingly away from local heritage sites like Arrow Rock to pre-packaged travel destinations made of myth. (“We’re going to Disney World!”) The Real Deal now has some formidable competition.

Arrow Rock has met similar challenges. Museums and living history sites all over the country are learning how to balance being a muse and being amusing. None other than venerable Colonial Williamsburg has introduced live theater performances into its regular programming. Their research into declining attendance figures found that visitors to historic sites want to make emotional connections and have highly interactive experiences that appeal to both adults and children. Now actors portray real characters from Colonial Williamsburg who interact with audiences to discuss issues leading up to the American Revolution.

Arrow Rock offers enormous opportunities for making emotional connections from early America to modern Missouri and American life; we’re still wrestling with race relations, the power of the federal government, what historians call The Columbian Exchange with Hispanic America, and our treatment of the natural environment.

Does it really make much difference to Missouri life if people no longer visit tiny Arrow Rock as much, or at all? I think it does. It’s the Real Deal. Although I love the magnificent Gateway Arch, I think Arrow Rock offers an equally valuable and in some ways better setting to remember our heritage. We still need to find ourselves in relation to the essential Missouri.

Forry suggests we need a sense of chronology to develop both our individual and cultural identities. (French philosopher Henri Bergson called this durée, but I promised my editor I wouldn’t use words like durée.) Forry believes we, too, are responsible for passing on cultural artifacts like Arrow Rock and for reinterpreting them for future generations so they also can remember and can become part of that great story.

Arrow Rock is a conservatory of antebellum America, a living legacy of The Essential Missouri. Mike Dickey concludes, “It is the people of Missouri who will decide if Arrow Rock is worthy of continued preservation for future generations.”

We are now the river.

June 2006

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