St. Charles, or "Chuck," as our St. Louis neighbors like to call it, is an old, old city located just west of St. Louis, across the Missouri river, and only about 10 minutes from Lambert St. Louis International Airport.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark dropped by here in 1804 before they set out to discover what lay beyond the Mississippi River. As Clark noted in his famous journal, St. Charles then comprised "about 100 indifferent houses, and about 450 inhabitants, principally French... The country around is beautiful." Chuck has grown by about 60,000 residents since then, but we like to think it's still beautiful.

Unlike St. Louis, it didn't grow up, it grew out, starting at the river and spreading for miles and miles west, south, and north. Now it's a mixture of small town/big city, but back in the 1760s, "Les Petits Cotes" ("The Little Hills") was just a cluster of French fur-traders' huts on the riverbank. This little settlement was renamed "St. Charles" after a Spanish missionary, Charles Borromeo, who founded our first Catholic parish.

Beginning in the 1830s, thousands of German immigrants came to Missouri. Many settled along the river and planted vineyards in fertile hills that looked so much like the Rhineland; others became farmers. My own ancestors came to St. Charles County in 1835 and founded family farms. The log cabin built by my maternal great-greats is still inhabited, though modernized. It's also deliciously haunted.

You may not know that St. Charles was Missouri's first capitol. And I don't mean to brag, but we do have our own saint: Rose Phillipine Duchesne, a French missionary nun who established a school here in 1818. Daniel Boone lived here for many years too. His impressive two-story, stone-block home still stands about 30 miles south of the city. It's open for tours and worth seeing. St. Charles has both a winery and a German-style winegarten, but if you prefer the kinds complete with vineyards and sweeping river vistas, journey about 45 minutes south to Augusta or west to Hermann. On a fall day when leaf colors peak, the view of the rolling hills in the river valley below is matchless.