North Main Street is a National Register District, and the buildings house a bunch of businesses that cater to the tourist crowd that comes from around the world to see the hometown of Mark Twain.

The houses are humble right by the water, as well, as you’d expect for the wharf stevedores (does anyone use that word anymore?).

Of course, a major part of the whole Mark Twain mythos is the steamboat, and rightfully so. But as I began to look up old photographs of Hannibal, a familiar theme began to develop.

Much like St. Louis, which boasts a steamboat on its city seal, Hannibal moved on from that mode of commercial transport and became a railroad town. Just look at the empty wharf below: there’s not a single steamboat to be seen but there are railroad warehouses blocking the city from the river.

Look at the two historic photographs below; it has become obvious that the citizens who photographed their town had many different promontories from which to capture the Platonic Ideal of their city, and they both chose to place, front and center, the massive railroad infrastructure of their community.

There are still rail lines going through the city, and it still has a prominent crossing (which very ingeniously cuts through a cliff before going across the river), but everything you see is largely gone now that once made up the rail yards along the Mississippi.