Missouri 2008 Official Vacation Planner - (Page 20) mysterious ceramics. Sedalia’s musical ambition centers on Scott Joplin, whose “ragged” compositions shocked polite society a century or so ago. Joplin played Sedalia’s red light district and penned his “Maple Leaf Rag” before moving on in 1900. The annual ragtime festival pulls early-jazz buffs from across the country and beyond, prompting Sedalia to dream of a Scott Joplin complex. Better Sunsets and Rounded Squares natural. At Big Spring Park, picturesque gardens surround a giant floral clock and natural springs wander the grounds. Neosho native Thomas Hart Benton transferred the local preference for swirling color to his canvases and murals. The Longwell Museum interprets his life, and each year the town organizes a Benton festival. George Washington Carver attended school here, and the Carver National Monument is only 10 miles away in Diamond. Every evening, tourists in tropical Key West celebrate the island sunsets. It’s a fun event but the sunsets themselves pale in comparison to the flaming spectacle that descends into the Missouri River at Washington. On West Front Street, the Meerschaum corncob pipe factory has operated since 1869 and now has its own museum. Gary Lucy, Missouri’s premier artist of the river, maintains his studio and gallery on West Main. The first photojournalism hall of fame in the United States opened a few years ago on West Second Street. Jesse James and Scott Joplin Perched on the Missouri River on the state’s western border, St. Joseph has a Wild West pedigree and 17 specialized museums to explain its history and culture. The Pony Express National Museum is here and so is the startling Glore Psychiatric Museum. Jesse James was murdered here in 1882 and the crime scene remains a big draw. The Albrecht-Kemper Museum houses one of the Midwest’s finest collections of American art. An active restoration movement is returning many downtown architectural treasures to life as the city plans a living history preserve, a new entertainment district and a riverfront nature center. Sedalia, a small city in western Missouri, wants to go national. Art and music are the vehicles. The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art hangs Chihuly’s “Cathedral Violet Chandelier” in its atrium and allows patrons to study Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure Ed. 7.” Recent exhibitions featured Tom Huck’s furious woodcuts and Jeffrey Mongrain’s “If you dream it, you can do it.” –Wa l t D i s n e y, M i s s o u r i f a r m b o y Galleries and museums jostle with restaurants and shops in downtown Washington, and wineries litter the countryside. Daniel Boone built the handsome limestone mansion across the river in Defiance. At West Plains, in far southern Missouri, the courthouse square is almost round. Oddly, streets enter the “square” at the middle of each side rather than at the corners. The resulting closed-in, circular street pattern feels like an open-air arena, a perfect setting for community events and neighborly visiting. Most downtown buildings date to the decades after the railroad arrived in 1885, and the city works to preserve the uniqueness of its central business district. An 1886 opera house crowns the district, and West Plains’ authentic Old Time Music–Ozark Heritage Festival fills the square each June with musicians, artisans, storytellers and crowds from across the Ozarks Highlands. Above: Bothwell Lodge State Historic Site, Sedalia Right: Historic St. Joseph at sunset 20 Missouri Vacation Planner 2008 GEORGE DENNISTON
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