r/MissouriRiver

From the National Gallery of Art:

https://www.nga.gov/artworks/75206-jolly-flatboatmen

"Sunlight bathes the landscape and warms the men floating downriver on a flat-bottomed boat. A man dances joyfully to music provided by his companions. Others look on, except for one who gazes directly at us.
George Caleb Bingham’s knowledge of life on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers is evident in the abundance of details, including a raccoon pelt, a coiled rope, a blue shirt hanging to dry, and a turkey peeking through a slatted crate. Absent, however, is evidence of the men’s arduous journey to trading posts upriver.
Many Americans were familiar with Bingham’s painting through the thousands of prints that reproduced this idealized scene of western expansion.”

Some shots from the Missouri River bottoms, where the hills give way to a floodplain that sees the state's namesake river ricochet between bluffs. It seems agriculture, industry, recreation, and nature all collide here in the most engineered, yet simultaneously wild, part of Boone County.

Around the village of McBaine, a subterranean alluvial aquifer creates waterlogged sand and gravel deposits that make the surrounding area ideal for both harvesting drinking water, as seen in the 18 large surface pumps that dot the landscape, and for growing crops such as soy and corn. 

Two miles northwest of McBaine, the village of Huntsdale, home to only 29 people as of 2020, is squeezed by the river’s bends into the bluffs on its northern bank. The Katy Trail State Park does run through the community, but it doesn't stop for pleasantries here as it does in McBaine or Rocheport. Previously, Katfish Katy's was the "center of activity” for the town. It closed in 2020.

From the State Historical Society of Missouri

https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/imc/id/69642/rec/3