Visitors Guide to St. Peters
Saint Charles County, Missouri
In the late 18th Century, French traders arrived in the area and in 1796 Jean Baptiste Blondeau began cultivating land along Dardenne Creek. The first permanent settler was Joseph Trendly who arrived in 1823. A small settlement of most French inhabitants arose in what is now old-town St. Peters taking its name from the first log church established in 1815, called St. Peters, on Dardenne Creek. During the 1830s to the 1850s German Catholics, escaping the political turmoil in Germany, began arriving in the region.
Although the area developed into a prosperous farming community St. Peters hadn’t been platted. When the North Missouri Railroad came through in the 1850’s Henry Reinke and H. Deppe laid out St. Peters. In 1875 the Hannibal and St. Louis Railroad was making slow progress through the floodplain of St. Charles County and the K Line was built connecting it to the North Missouri at St. Peters. As St. Peters was now the junction of these two railroads, the town became an important railroad center.
By the end of the 19th Century, St. Peters boasted two railroad depots and a flourishing main street of shops, hotels and saloons. The original log church was replaced several times until its congregation built the gothic All Saints Church that sits on a hill overlooking the community. St. Peters formally incorporated in 1910 as a village. Over the next two decades automobiles and trucks replaced horses and railroads.
Today, St. Peters has family-friendly community of over 50,000 is home to "The Rec-Plex," a major sports complex in the state and the county's largest shopping center, Mid Rivers Mall.
