All Historic District

Green Tree Tavern – Missouri’s Oldest Standing Building and a Window Into Frontier History Standing across from the famed locus of Jour de Fête in Sainte Geneviève, the Green Tree Tavern represents more than just historic architecture—it’s a living chronicle of American frontier life, cultural convergence, and the diverse lives that shaped the westward expansion. As the oldest verified building in Missouri, scientifically dated to 1790 through dendrochronology, this French colonial structure has served as family home, gathering place, inn, tobacco shop, and the meeting hall for the first Masonic Lodge west of the Mississippi River. Now part of Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park, Green Tree Tavern offers visitors a tangible connection to the complex, layered history of America’s heartland. A Building That Tells Multiple Stories What makes Green Tree Tavern exceptional isn’t just its age—it’s the remarkable diversity of human experiences that unfolded within its walls. Built by Nicolas Janis, a French Canadian immigrant from Kaskaskia, Illinois, the structure became home to his family and the fifteen people they enslaved. This uncomfortable truth sits at the foundation of Green Tree Tavern’s story, reminding us that Missouri’s early settlement depended on the forced labor of enslaved African Americans whose experiences Read more…

Louie’s Smokin’ Hot – Heat Seekers, Flavor Chasers, and Cigar Aficionados Find Their Paradise Walk into Louie’s Smokin’ Hot at 360 Merchant Street and you’re immediately confronted with choices—hundreds of hot sauces ranging from mild pepper vinegars to extract-based insanity, BBQ sauces spanning every regional style and flavor profile, gourmet mustards that elevate sandwiches from pedestrian to memorable, and a wall of infused olive oils and balsamic vinegars that transform home cooking from routine to restaurant-quality. This isn’t a shop where you grab a bottle and leave. This is a tasting destination where homemade baguettes wait on the counter for dipping into truffle olive oil, fig-infused balsamic vinegar, maple balsamic, or Sicilian lemon olive oil—allowing you to actually experience flavors before committing to purchase. The “Smokin’ Hot” name promises heat, and the hot sauce selection delivers with authority, but the shop’s real genius lies in recognizing that serious food enthusiasts want more than just capsaicin: they want complexity, quality ingredients, artisan production, and the opportunity to discover small-batch producers they’d never encounter in conventional grocery stores. Add a humidity-controlled humidor stocked with fine cigars, and Louie’s becomes the rare specialty shop that serves multiple enthusiast communities under one roof—the chiliheads Read more…

Lovegoods Candy + Toys – Where Magic Meets Nostalgia at Downtown’s Gateway At the corner of Market and 4th Street—the literal entrance to Sainte Geneviève’s historic downtown—Lovegoods Candy + Toys occupies the building with the town’s most Instagram-worthy feature: a colorful mural spelling out “STE GENEVIEVE” that draws photographers and selfie-takers before they even step inside. Opened in August 2025, Lovegoods brings whimsy and wonder to Missouri’s oldest town, creating a candy and toy destination where magic meets classic American nostalgia in a shop that’s part sweet emporium, part toy wonderland, part downtown landmark. Lovegoods channels a spirit of open-mindedness, creativity, individuality, and finding magic in unexpected places through eclectic inventory mixing traditional favorites with unique discoveries, creating shopping experience where kids find classic toys and candies their grandparents remember while adults discover novelty treats they’ve never encountered. The mural-adorned building serves as downtown gateway marker—arriving visitors driving up 4th Street toward Market see “STE GENEVIEVE” spelled out large and bright, signaling they’ve reached the historic core while Lovegoods itself welcomes them with doors full of possibilities for treats, toys, gifts, and discoveries. The Sweet Side: Candy for Every Craving Lovegoods’ candy selection spans the full spectrum from nostalgic classics Read more…

About the Museum Learning Center:  If you’re looking for something that will dazzle you to see in a small town, be sure to stop by the Museums Learning Center (otherwise known as the “Dinosaur Musuem.”  This place is one huge labor of love and a microcosm of what makes this community special.   Your adventure starts in the hall of giants, a room full of massive life-like dinosaur and other Cretaceous Period animal replicas.  Surrounding those are shadow boxes filled with actual fossils from different periods.  On the west end of the hall is a glassed-in room where live Archaeologists periodically work in front of visitors scrupulously chiseling away the clay around the bones of the Missouri dinosaur.  The next layer of exhibits centers around the fossils of that now-famed dinosaur and the current dig happening just south of Sainte Geneviève.  The entire upstairs moves more toward modern times and focuses on interesting collections from a variety of topics, from Civil War Battlefields, to the objects found buried in the outhouses that used to reside in the yards of early St. Louisans.  The story that you won’t get that makes this so impressive is the collections on display, and the dinosaur Read more…

Sainte Genevieve Memorial Cemetery – Missouri’s Oldest Cemetery  Most historic cemeteries offer orderly rows of weathered headstones, carefully maintained grounds, and clear boundaries separating the living from the dead. Memorial Cemetery operates differently. This is a 5th and Merchant Streets hillside where more than 3,500 people—perhaps up to 5,000—lie in graves that are mostly unmarked, their wooden crosses having rotted away over the 235+ years since the cemetery’s establishment in 1787. The oldest marked grave belongs to Louis Le Clere (dated 1796, though burials certainly occurred earlier), and remarkably, burials continued 15 years after the official 1882 closure when the cemetery had become so crowded and weedy that it posed a health hazard. This is where Missouri’s territorial representative John Scott rests alongside French commandant Jean Baptiste Vallé, where Revolutionary War soldier Jacques Misse sleeps near Civil War Colonel killed at Shiloh, where enslaved people lie in their enslavers’ plots while free African Americans and Native Americans occupy the uphill section, and where Senator Lewis Linn was buried three times—the third interment occurring in 1938 when his nearly 100-year-old corpse was found remarkably preserved in its air-tight, lead-lined coffin, and people lined up to view his face through the window Read more…