Rocheport turned 200 in 2025. For a town that now counts about 200 people, two centuries is a long time to stay on the map. Here is how it got its name, and how it kept going.
The name came out of an argument
John Gray got here first, or close to it. He arrived around 1819 and ran a horse ferry at the mouth of Moniteau Creek, trading with settlers heading west. When the townsite was surveyed in 1825, the plan was to call it “Rockport.” A French missionary in the neighborhood pushed back and got his way: Rocheport, French for “rocky port,” after the limestone bluffs that stand over the river here. The plat was not formally recorded until 1832, but the town counts its start from 1825 — which is why 2025 was the bicentennial. The State Historical Society of Missouri and a Missouri Department of Natural Resources marker in town tell the same story.
You will sometimes see the founding pinned on a single named founder. The records do not support one tidy name. Gray’s ferry and the 1825 survey are what the town actually grew from.
Lewis and Clark saw it first
The Corps of Discovery passed the mouth of Moniteau Creek on June 7, 1804, and William Clark wrote down the painted figures on the rock face above the water. They came back through, eastbound, in September 1806, according to the National Park Service.
The steamboat years
Through the mid-1800s Rocheport grew fast on river traffic, becoming one of the busiest shipping points on the Missouri between St. Louis and St. Joseph. Farmers hauled hemp, tobacco, and grain down to the landing to meet the steamboats. The 1860 census counted 735 people, the town’s high-water mark. The Civil War was hard on it: Rocheport sat in contested country and drew guerrilla raids from both sides. The federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation lays out that arc.
The railroad and the tunnel
In 1892 the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad — the “Katy” — cut its line through the bluff west of town. The 243-foot stone tunnel it blasted is still there, and it is the only tunnel on the entire Katy Trail.
Asleep, then awake
The 20th century thinned the town out. Businesses closed, floods came and went, and the population fell to roughly 200, where it sits today. Part of what saved the old buildings was plain neglect: nobody tore them down to put up something new. In 1976 the whole town went on the National Register of Historic Places, its oldest buildings dating to the 1830s.
Then came the trail. After a 1986 flood ended rail service, the corridor became a state park. The first section of the Katy Trail opened in April 1990, right here between Rocheport and McBaine, per Missouri State Parks. Today the Katy runs 240 miles, the longest developed rail-trail in the country, and the state counts more than 400,000 visitors a year. That trail is the reason Rocheport has a second act: the shops, the bed-and-breakfasts, and Les Bourgeois Vineyards up on the bluff all run on people who came to ride and stayed for lunch.
The bicentennial
The town marked 200 years in 2025 with history programs, trail events, and two things you can still go see. Missouri artist Joe Schlottach painted a mural — the first in the historic district — commissioned by the Friends of Historic Rocheport. And the Rotary Club raised a granite Peace Pole inscribed in the four languages that shaped this stretch of the river valley: Osage, French, English, and German.
Two hundred years in, Rocheport is still good at the thing it has always been good at: lasting. You can find more of what is happening around town on our community and events pages.