Cape Girardeau, MO

Mark Twain complimented the “handsome appearance” of Cape Girardeau, a hillside river town in southeastern Missouri. If he were to visit today he might still recognize some of the buildings in the 130-block historic business district, which is on the National Register of Historic Districts. A large brick building from 1830-50, 19 N. Water St., now hosts Port Cape Girardeau Restaurant and Lounge. Another brick structure that Twain called a “great Jesuit school for boys” (in reality, St. Vincent’s College and Seminary, which closed in 1979) now houses part of the River Campus of Southeast Missouri State University. The town’s several institutions of higher education as early as Twain’s time perhaps explain why, in Life on the Mississippi, he chose to quote Uncle Mumford who said that “Cape Girardeau was the Athens of Missouri.”

November 18

Posts from Cape Girardeau, MO

Small river towns of Keokuk, IA, and Cape Girardeau, MO, showcase Twain’s writings and letters

On the drive to Keokuk, Iowa, where a young Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) worked as a printer in the mid-1850s, we stop in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, for lunch. We have Twain as an appetizer. A building … Read more >>