Roughly a day’s paddling downstream from the Kaw Point start, MR340 racers pass two of the river’s oldest Missouri towns: Lexington and Waverly. Neither is a place most spectators think about, but both carry real weight in Missouri’s story.
Lexington sits on a high bluff above the river in Lafayette County, and it’s best known as the site of the Battle of Lexington, an 1861 Civil War engagement now preserved as the Battle of Lexington State Historic Site. According to Missouri State Parks (mostateparks.com), the site includes the Anderson House, which served as a field hospital during the fighting and still bears cannonball damage from the battle — a rare, physically intact piece of the state’s Civil War history sitting almost directly above the river the race runs past.
The State Historical Society of Missouri (shsmo.org) holds photograph and manuscript collections documenting Lexington’s long river history beyond the battle, too — its 19th-century role as a Missouri River port and trading town, part of the broader network of steamboat landings that once defined commerce along this stretch of river, before rail and road travel took over. That commercial history is part of why river towns like Lexington grew up on bluffs in the first place: high ground above flood-prone bottomland, with deep water close enough for steamboats to land.
A little further downstream, Waverly carries a quieter version of that same river-town story. It’s a small Lafayette County community that grew up along the Missouri River’s north bank, and like Lexington, its history is tied to the river’s role as the region’s original highway, long before highways existed.
For MR340 racers, this stretch of river is just miles and hours — a long, often hot afternoon and evening of paddling with a headlamp eventually coming out for the overnight push. But the bluffs and bottomland they’re passing were shaping Missouri’s history long before anyone thought to race a canoe down this river, and they’ll keep doing it long after this year’s fleet reaches St. Charles.
Next in this series: we’ll pick the course back up further downstream as the race approaches Missouri’s midsection.
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