Boonville

We rolled into Boonville on rented bikes, dusty from a stretch of the Katy Trail, Missouri’s 240-mile rail-trail that runs along the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad bed, and the town rises up from the river on a bluff lined with nineteenth-century brick storefronts that made the whole ride feel worth it. Boonville was a river-trade boomtown before the railroad came and a railroad town after, and it’s kept enough of both eras intact that walking Main Street feels like flipping through two different centuries at once.

Thespian Hall

The building that stopped us mid-stride was Thespian Hall, a Greek Revival theater built in 1857 that claims to be the oldest theater still in continuous operation west of the Allegheny Mountains. It’s hosted everything from Civil War troop encampments — both Union and Confederate forces used the building at different points — to touring vaudeville acts to the film festival it hosts today. We got lucky and caught the tail end of a community theater rehearsal, the director letting us sit in the back for twenty minutes just to hear the acoustics in a room that old.

The Katy Trail and the river bluff

Boonville sits at a key junction of the Katy Trail, where the path crosses the Missouri River on a converted railroad bridge, and we watched the evening light turn the water copper-colored from the middle of that bridge, bikes leaned against the railing. Below the bluff, Kemper Park gives river access and a boat ramp still used by local fishermen, and above it, the historic district’s ironwork balconies and cast facades made for the kind of unhurried evening walk that road-trip towns rarely offer.

Getting There

Boonville is about thirty minutes west of Columbia and two hours east of Kansas City on I-70, with Kansas City International (MCI) or Columbia Regional (COU) the practical airport options. A car is the easiest way in, though if you’re already on the Katy Trail, Boonville is an easy pedal from either Columbia-area or Sedalia-area trailheads.