Arrow Rock - Filming at a Historic Location
Nestled near the bank of the Missouri River, Arrow Rock retains much of the original 19th century character and charm that it possessed when George Caleb Bingham walked its streets. Many of the locales of Bingham's day, like Huston's Tavern and John Sites' gun shop still stand, lovingly preserved and restored by a dedicated group of citizens committed to the town and its legacy.
The Everyday Life of George Caleb Bingham
Bingham's home and studio, where he lived intermittently throughout the 1840s, sits just a block north of Arrow Rock's Main Street.
It was here that he painted portraits of his townspeople, penned sketches of his Midwestern surroundings, and grew in talent and experience as an artist.
Setting as Character
While most of Bingham's greatest paintings featured the river and the landscape, it was the people who were at the center, living in harmony with a landscape that they shaped into a place that had its own character.
Businesses and shops along main street, dozens of quiet homes all collectively create a setting that is history preserved, a moment in time fixed as though in amber.
You can visit this town and walk in places tread by people who lived nearly two centuries ago, who had similar dreams and hopes, and for whom this town represented the culmination of something wonderful. It was a place very much alive, one that still lives today despite the demands of progress.
The River as Lifeline
In the first half the nineteenth century, waterways were the lifeblood of any foundling city or town. Where there weren't rivers, engineers endeavored to build canals, to bring the water to the people.
Arrow Rock was one such town, ideally situated to accept goods and people coming up river, destined to travel further west on the Santa Fe Trail, or to homestead nearby. It became a place of prosperity, a symbol of America's destiny to spread and civilize the land.
Until civilization divined new, better modes of transport. Until it laid down rails of iron and roads of concrete that bypassed little towns like Arrow Rock. Until the river itself drifted away as it formed new paths. The Missouri River could bring life and prosperity, and it could also take it.
