The next town is Bonaparte, which is named after Napoleon, of course. Many people don’t realize that many Americans admired the supposedly Enlightenment-inspired French emperor due to his conflict with ancient monarchies in Europe. The beginning of the town centered around William Meek’s founding of mills (he named the town) in 1837. The building above and below was a pants factory owned by the Meeks.

The Meeks built a grist mill in 1841, which I believe is when this building below can be dated to. The waterwheel is a later reconstruction. There would have been a mill race that would have brough water to the actual wheel, its water raised due to a dam on the river.

Still, it’s an excellent example of a mill that would have been served by steamboats that very well could have reached St. Louis.

There were actually a set of locks at Bonaparte; below are some ruins that I was not able to determine were the foundations of another mill or the locks.

The water was low in the river; it’s hard to believe but it has flooded on multiple occasions, causing severe damage. The town has also been damaged by fire, as well.

Many of the buildings on the main street are the ones built to replace the ones destroyed by the last great fire.

Many of the storefronts now house antique stores.

This building below was the opera house, constructed in the 1890s after the fire.

The cast iron store fronts were manufactured in St. Louis, of course.

Mesker Brothers were one of the largest in St. Louis who produced cast iron storefront elements as well as other decorative elements. You can read an article about these companies I wrote here at St. Louis Magazine.

This grocery was also constructed to replace a building destroyed by the fire.

This was Aunty Green’s Hotel.

No Sinclair Dinosaur!

As is much of the Midwest, glaciers came far to the south. This granite boulder was dumped in downtown Bonaparte nearby, and was moved to this location along the main street.