Trail of Tears State Park

In 1838 the United States drove more than 16,000 Cherokee people from their homelands in the Southeast. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 had not required force, but after the Treaty of New Echota of 1835, signed by a minority faction with no authority to give up the Nation's land, it was carried out by force. In the winter of 1838 and 1839 the detachments went west toward Indian Territory and nine of the thirteen crossed the Mississippi into Missouri here, in Cape Girardeau County. Floating ice stopped the crossing. The detachments had to make camp on both sides of the river and wait in rain, snow and freezing cold, with disease among them.

The park, established in 1957, is a memorial to that crossing and a certified site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. The visitor center on Moccasin Springs Road has exhibits on the removal, and a 23-minute National Park Service film plays on request. The Bushyhead Memorial is a tribute to all the Cherokee who died on the trail. It takes its name from Nancy Bushyhead Walker Hildebrand, sister of the Rev. Jesse Bushyhead, who led one of the detachments. By local tradition she died here; her two children went on to Indian Territory.

The rest of the park's 3,415 acres are steep river hills. Peewah Trail runs about 8 miles through the Indian Creek Wild Area to bluffs above the river, and Sheppard Point looks over the Mississippi and is a good place for eagles in winter.