Trail of tears state park missouri

The Trail of Tears State Park is a 3,400-acre park with a superb preserve of an original Mississippi River landscape. It is also a sober reminder of the intolerance of a young country and a memorial to a resilient people who persevered.

THE VIEW FROM THE OVERLOOK is grand and serene.

The Mississippi River stretches lazily north and south. Limestone bluffs three hundred feet high stand guard on the west, and bottomland farms line the eastern side of the valley.

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You may spot an eagle soaring over the lush green forest that cloaks the rugged hollows that extend through the bluffs to the river.

Regardless of the peaceful vision this sublime view may evoke, it once overlooked one of the sorriest episodes in American history.

That infamy gives Trail of Tears State Park its name. Here at Moccasin Springs in the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, nine contingents of Cherokee were ferried across the icy Mississippi River, a formidable obstacle on the forced ma