Landscape Information
The approximately four-mile-long section of the Katy Trail that runs between the Glosemeyer General Store, in Peers, Missouri, and the Mercantile and Farmer’s Bank Building, in Treloar, Missouri, signifies the importance of the Missouri–Kansas–Texas (Katy) Railway and the Missouri River in early rural life. German immigrants constructed both the Glosemeyer store and the Treloar Mercantile to capitalize on the business brought by the Katy Railroad in 1896. The surrounding agricultural region came to be called the Missouri Rhineland, which took its name from its resemblance to the forested countryside of western Germany. After a flood in 1903, the course of the Missouri River shifted some two-and-a-half miles south, away from the Glosemeyer store. Although the store had served river traffic, it remained a source of trade and commerce along the railway line. The late-Victorian timber frame store operated continuously from 1896 until it closed in 2012. In 2014 the store was purchased became an outpost along the Trail to welcome visitors, celebrate local history, and to advocate for land conservation. Located west along the Trail, the two-story brick Treloar Mercantile Building, once a center of local commerce and trade, served a similar function as the Glosemeyer store. Part of the building was occupied by a bank, which closed during the Great Depression. The bank was replaced by a post office, which operated until the mid-2000s. To bookend the corridor, the founders of Magnificent Missouri purchased both buildings to preserve examples of the region’s German heritage, vernacular architecture, and local construction techniques. Between the two stores, the eight-foot-wide crushed stone bicycle and pedestrian greenway provides expansive views of nearby farmland, offering scenic vistas of creeks, rolling pastures, bottomland fields, and dense deciduous forests. The Glosemeyer General Store was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2018 and the Treloar Mercantile in 2022.
