Gateway Arch, toasted ravioli, and the birthplace of ragtime
St. Louis rises where the Mississippi and Missouri rivers meet, a city built on fur trading, railroads, and the westward expansion that made the Gateway Arch its fitting monument. It hosted the 1904 World's Fair, the same event credited — perhaps apocryphally — with popularizing the ice cream cone, the hot dog bun, and iced tea. The city's music scene runs deep too: Scott Joplin composed ragtime here, and the blues clubs on Washington Avenue still carry that legacy forward. Toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, and a stubborn loyalty to provel cheese round out a food culture that's proudly, defiantly regional. Beyond downtown, Forest Park and The Hill neighborhood give St. Louis a small-town warmth that belies its history as one of America's great 19th-century boomtowns.
