St. Louis was founded near the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers because of the advantage this location offered for transportation and commerce. As the “Gateway to the West” it was a natural stopping-off point for the artists who set out to explore the new frontier via steamboat and overland travel.

Artists were not alone in recognizing the need to document the frontier. In 1847, an art critic writing for The Literary World urged artists to preserve the vanishing wilderness, saying;

"The axe of civilization is busy with our old forests. What were once the wild and picturesque haunts . . . where the wild deer roamed in freedom, are becoming the abodes of commerce and the seats of manufactures . . . Yankee enterprise has little sympathy with the picturesque, and it behooves our artists to rescue from its grasp the little that is left, before it is too late."

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Karl Bodmer, Fort Clark on the Missouri, 1834
Karl Bodmer, Fort Clark on the
Missouri
, 1834

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon
Thomas Moran,  The Grand Canyon
of Arizona
, 1912
John Caspar Wild, View of Carondalet, 1841
John Caspar Wild, View of Carondalet, 1841
Carl Wimar, Sketch of the Upper Missouri, 1859

Carl Wimar, Sketch of the Upper Missouri, 1859
George Catlin, Catching the Wild Horse, 1844
George Catlin, Catching the
Wild Horse
, 1844
Henry Lewis, Piasa Rock
Henry Lewis,
The Piasa Rock
, 1847
Louis Schultze, Prairie Fire, ca. 1880
Louis Schultze,
Prairie Fire
, ca. 1880
Carl Wimar, Landscape with Boulders, n.d.
Carl Wimar,
Landscape with Boulders
, 1872