Saint Louis, MO news and local guide

In late 1763 Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent and Pierre Laclede formed a fur-trading company, and Laclede went looking for a base less flood-prone than Ste. Genevieve. He chose high ground just south of where the Missouri and Illinois rivers join the Mississippi and predicted it "might become, hereafter, one of the finest cities in America." In February 1764 he sent his 14-year-old stepson, Auguste Chouteau, with about 30 settlers to start building, and he arrived two months later with a street plan modeled on New Orleans. France had already agreed to give its lands west of the Mississippi to Spain. The town's French families built its economy on the fur trade with the Osage and with tribes up the Missouri, and French colonists held enslaved Africans as servants and workers. During the American Revolution, British-allied Native forces attacked the town unsuccessfully in the 1780 Battle of St. Louis. The territory passed back to France and then, with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, to the United States. Sources Wikipedia: St. Louis