The history of Township of Sainte Genevieve
Sainte Genevieve began in 1732 as a French colonial settlement on the Mississippi, becoming a Spanish colonial city in 1762 and a county seat in 1735. Its historic core, centred near the Valle Street corner, preserves French colonial houses, a cemetery of early notables, and now a national historical park created in 2020.
Valle Street meets Jefferson and North Main Streets in Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, within the historic core of the first lasting European settlement west of the Mississippi River, founded by French colonists in 1732. The corner lies close to the Louis Bolduc House and the Felix Vallé House State Historic Site, both preserved as museums of the town's French colonial years.
French settlers founded the first town west of the river
You're standing where Valle Street meets Jefferson Street and North Main Street, in Sainte Genevieve, Missouri. This is old ground. French traders and farmers settled this town along the Mississippi River in the 1700s, the first lasting European settlement west of the river. The Louis Bolduc House, a colonial home now run as a museum, sits a quarter mile away, and the Felix Vallé House State Historic Site, preserved from the town's early days, stands about 750 feet off.
Colonial houses stand open as museums near this corner
The corner at Valle Street, Jefferson Street and North Main Street now anchors Sainte Genevieve's historic district, where the Felix Vallé House State Historic Site and Louis Bolduc House stand open to visitors as museums of the town's French colonial years.
You can still walk the streets the French laid out, past the stone and timber houses that remain from that first settlement.
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.