Rocheport doesn’t creep up on you on the Katy Trail — you round a bend past the old railroad grade and the bluffs are just there, limestone walls rising over the water, with the town tucked against the base of them like it’s always belonged.
The trailhead sits at mile marker 178.3 on the trail’s own numbering, according to Missouri State Parks, with parking, restrooms, and bike rentals a short walk into town at Meriwether Café and Bike Shop. One practical note: restrooms and water at the trailhead go offline November through March, so plan around that if you’re coming through in the cold months.
This particular stretch of trail has history of its own. The first section of the Katy Trail ever opened to the public was right here at Rocheport, back in 1990, according to Missouri State Parks — three years before the rest of the 240-mile route between Clinton and Machens was stitched together. The old stone railroad tunnel just outside town, cut for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (“Katy”) Railroad, is still there, a reminder of what it took to run a rail line through this bluff country in the first place.
Go back further and the bluffs themselves are the real landmark. Lewis and Clark’s expedition stopped near here on June 7, 1804, and Clark wrote of finding “Courious Paintings and Carveing in the projecting rock of Limestone inlade with white red & blue flint,” according to the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The party also turned up what Clark called “a Den of rattle Snakes” at the site and killed three before moving on — worth keeping in mind next time you’re scrambling up those same rocks for a better photo. Today, the trail’s run through this area — between Cooper and St. Charles counties — is an official segment of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, per Missouri State Parks.
The town itself came along two decades after Lewis and Clark passed through, platted in 1825 as a trading post where Moniteau Creek meets the Missouri River, according to Rocheport’s own town history.
None of this is a stretch you pass through quickly, and that’s sort of the point. The bluffs press the trail right up against the river here, which is a big part of why Rocheport shows up on so many lists of the prettiest miles on the whole trail — a trail that’s since been named part of the American Discovery Trail, a Millennium Legacy Trail, and, in 2008, inducted into the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy Hall of Fame, per Missouri State Parks. Grab a glass of something at Les Bourgeois Vineyards up on the bluff, or just stand at the trailhead and look at the same rock Clark was writing about 222 years ago. Either way, you’ll understand pretty quickly why the town never had to try very hard to be worth the stop.
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