This Month in St. Louis History

Route 66 completed; fluoride in drinking water

The last mile of the old Route 66 highway in Missouri was finished in January, 1931, and St. Louis began adding fluoride in drinking water in January, 1963.

Also, in January, 1939, a thousand southeast Missouri sharecroppers went on strike to protest the way landowners and government regulations kept them in poverty.

These were some of significant events in past Januarys that shaped Missouri's history.

To help kids get a sense of the state's colorful past, Young Saint Louis.com combines with the Missouri History Museum each month to give details of past happenings. If you want to learn more about past historical events, visit www.mohistory.org.

Route 66 highway completed in 1931

In the early 20th century, the Route 66 highway was the nearest thing to a continental highway. It was a network of federal highways that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. Later, it was extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica.

The last mile of the highway in Missouri finally was paved in Phelps County, Mo., on Jan. 5, 1931. It wasn't until mid-1938 that the whole route was paved. The final section was near Oldham, Texas.

The length of the whole highway was just short of 2,500 miles and proved to be a boon to the growth of California.

Famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, "Route 66 is a giant chute down which everything loose in this country is sliding into southern California."

In Missouri, Route 66 was from St. Louis to Joplin, Mo., on its way to Tulsa, Okla., and points southwestward.

St. Louis is the largest city along the route from Chicago to Los Angeles.

During its history, parts of the highway route were relocated from time to time. For instance, in 1935, the route was shifted to cross the Mississippi River on the Chain of Rocks Bridge in north St. Louis.

In 1952, the Chain of Rocks Bridge was one of eight stops in the dedication of the highway as the Will Rogers Highway.

But, with the coming of the Interstate Highway system, Route 66 was decommissioned piece by piece.

The final stretch was dropped in 1985 when a 5.7 mile stretch at Williams, Arizona, was replaced by I-40. The old Route 66 has been replaced by segments of Interstates 55, 44, 40, 15 and 10.

For a map with points of interest along Route 66 through St. Louis, visit www.missouri66.org/history.html.

To strengthen teeth, fluoride added to drinking water

One of the landmarks in St. Louis' public health history came in January, 1963, when St. Louis County began fluoridation of municipal drinking water. The preventive health measure started after a U.S. Supreme Court decision okaying mandatory fluoridation.

Fluoridation of community water supplies was a controversial proposal throughout the country. But, it is considered now by health officials to be one of the premier community health measures of the 20th century.

But, proving a link between fluoride and preventing tooth decay came in an unusual way.

In the early 1900s, dentists in such places as Colorado Springs, Colo., and Bauxite, Ala., noted that some of their patients had permanent stains on their teeth. But, they also found that those patients with stains had a lesser amount of decay.

At that time, tooth decay was one of the primary dental problems in the United States.

Advanced analysis by a chemist for an Aluminum Company of America plant in Alabama found local public water supplies where teeth stains occurred had high levels of fluoride.

Further lengthy research, scientists showed the stains could be eliminated if fluoride levels were lowered. But, decay-fighting properties remained even at low fluoride levels.

The first field-tests of controlled fluoridation of public water supplies started in 1945 in four pairs of cities, including three in the United States and one pair in Canada. By the 1960s, there were federal standards for optimum fluoridation levels.

Lower amounts were recommended for warm-weather states where water consumption was higher, with higher amounts in cold-weather areas.

But, public opposition to what they thought of as poisoning of water supplies continued. One legal challenge was in St. Louis County. But, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it.

For an interesting history of fluoridation of water supplies, you can visit: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview.mmwrhtml.mm4841a1.htm.

For St. Louis County health highlights, visit www.stlouisco.com/doh/history.htm.

The Missouri sharecroppers' strike of 1939

The Civil War was fought to end slavery in the United States. But, in 1939, a group of 1,000 sharecroppers in the Missouri Bootheel staged a highway-closing strike that brought public attention to a different type of servitude.

The Sharecroppers Strike shut down two highways in southeast Missouri and brought national attention to harsh rules on Bootheel cotton plantations. The protest also showed the inattention by government officials to the poverty conditions of sharecroppers.

Sharecropping involves people who work the land and those that own the land. At harvest time, the workers and landowners were to share the income from the crop. However, oftentimes, the workers' share of the income was small.

Photo by Arthur Rothstein, "Here our possessions lie." Evicted sharecroppers' roadside demonstration, January 1939.

Many of the protesters were African Americans. But, there were some poor white sharecroppers who joined to protest against low wages and harsh rules.

The leader of the protest was Owen Whitfield. He was a preacher as well as organizer of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU).

The protest spurred increased media coverage across the country.

The turmoil was increased when the Missouri health commissioner ruled the roadside camps were a public health menace. In many cases, state police disbanded the camps.

Officials of the Farm Security Administration, a Depression-era agency, became involved. By 1940, construction started on a public housing project to house the protesters. A total of 595 houses were constructed in villages segregated by race.

In 1945, Congress ordered the FSA to sell the villages. Original plans called for selling each village to one purchaser. But, public protest led to revising the sale order to include sales of individual homes.

There are two websites that provide more details of this important protest. You can visit www.umsl.edu/services/library/blackstudies/homeless.htm.