Soulard Farmers Market

In 1779, St. Louis was a small French outpost on the western bank of the Mississippi. That year, farmers began meeting in a flat meadow south of the settlement to sell their goods. Two hundred and forty-five years later, Soulard Farmers Market is still open.

Every Wednesday through Saturday, year-round, in the same Soulard neighborhood where those farmers first gathered. It is the oldest continuously operating public market west of the Mississippi River.

The market's name and survival both trace to one woman. Julia Cerré Soulard navigated a decades-long legal battle over the land, eventually securing the deed. In 1841, she donated two full city blocks to St. Louis on one condition: the land must be used as a public market, forever.

On May 27, 1896, the Great Cyclone of St. Louis destroyed the market entirely — one of the deadliest tornadoes ever to strike an American city. Nine people were found dead in the rubble. The market vendors rebuilt in temporary sheds and kept selling. By 1929, the current building was complete: a masterwork of Italian Renaissance design modeled after Brunelleschi's Foundling Hospital in Florence.

Today Soulard hosts more than 140 vendors across its Grand Hall and open-air wings. Saturday is the day — the market's busiest, most electric morning, when 10,000 people pass through before noon.