Arrow Rock

The village the plaque inventories gained a stage in 1961. That year a former Baptist church, a Gothic Revival building of 1872, opened as the Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatre, offered by the Lawrence and Argubright families who co-owned it, with Henry Swanson, a Columbia College professor, as its first artistic director. The first season of three nineteenth-century plays ran on a budget of $3,500. A 1993 renovation enlarged the house, which now seats 416, and the Lyceum works as a regional Equity company, billed as Missouri's oldest professional regional theater.

What the plaque says

Arrow Rock At the Arrow Rock State Park entrance stands this pioneer town as a memorial to the Boon's Lick Country and the expanding frontier. In the 24-acre park are Arrow Rock Tavern, built by Joseph Huston, ca. 1834, for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, restored and operated as a museum and inn by the State Society of D.A.R. and the State of Missouri; Arrow Rock Academy museum, a former girls' school, chartered 1843; "a one-man" jail; the state-restored George C. Bingham House; and other sites. Southwest of town are Sappington and Arrow Rock cemeteries; Sappington and Marmaduke houses; Nathaniel B. Tucker home, "Ardmore"; site of Thomas A. Smith's prairie farm, "Experiment." Some 12 miles southeast is grave of fur trader William H. Ashley, Missouri's first lieutenant governor. Across the river is Boon's Lick, where Daniel Boone's sons boiled salt probably as early as 1807. Near town lived Dr. John Sappington, noted for his "Anti-Fever (quinine) Pills," author first medical book west of Mississippi, founder of Sappington School Fund; and Governors M. M. and John S. Marmaduke and C. F. Jackson. (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953 Arrow Rock (Continued from other side) This ancient site was noted by explorers and travelers. The Frenchman D'anville marked Pierre a Fleche (Fr. Arrow Rock) on his map of the Missouri River, 1755; the Lewis and Clark Expedition noted the site, 1804; and S. H. Long of the Yellowstone Expedition, 1819, said that it got its name from the Indians' using the outcropping flint to point their arrows. A blockhouse, which also served as an Indian trading post, was built and operated here, 1813-1814, by George C. Sibley, trading agent from Fort Osage (Missouri). Also in the area were Cox's Fort, McMahan's Fort, and across the river Cooper's Fort-family defenses in the War of 1812. In 1821 William Becknell crossed the river here, at what became Santa Fe Crossing, on the first successful trading expedition to Santa Fe. Laid out as New Philadelphia in 1829, and later renamed Arrow Rock, the town served as seat of Saline County for one year, 1839. During the Civil War a part of the town was burned. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arrow Rock State Historic Site — steps away
  A Boonslick river town of more than 1,000 that the river and railroads left behind, built and worked by enslaved people, now a village of fifty and a National Historic Landmark.
• Boone's Lick State Historic Site — 3.7 mi
  The salt spring in the Howard County woods that Daniel Boone's sons worked from 1805, whose name spread to a road, a country and the first American settlement of central Missouri.
• Annie and Abel Van Meter State Park — 21 mi
  The homeland of the Missouria, the Nutachi, on the loess ridges at the Great Bend, where Marquette's 1673 map placed their town and a cultural center tells their history.
• Katy Trail State Park — 22 mi
  Two hundred forty miles of the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas rail bed between Machens and Clinton, mostly along the Missouri River, first opened in 1990 at Rocheport, where it runs through the railroad's stone tunnel.

More markers nearby

• Boonville/Franklin — 12 mi
• Glasgow — 12 mi
• Boonville — 14 mi
• Fayette — 15 mi