Exploring Fort Osage Historic Site

I love making history ever more real for our family! Virginia made Thomas Jefferson come more to life nine months ago, and we saw Lewis and Clark’s artifacts in his home and garden. Now we are in the land they explored making them ever more alive. Love it! . . Lewis and Clark went past this site, picked it out as a future fort location, and Clark came back and helped build Fort Osage along the Missouri River. . . This national historic site has a museum and historical reenactors who told us all about the soldiers at the short-lived frontier fort and the “factory” (trading post) where Osage Indians came to trade with the government-led trader. Even though there wasn’t ever a battle here, the soldiers were stationed to protect the land from other countries and to hopefully form good relationships with the locals. And then in the museum, we learned all about the promises the government broke as they took more and more land away, of course. . . Granted, much of the time, they were more excited by cheering on the kayakers racing from Kansas City to St. Louis down the Missouri River - which is huge!