About

Grand Tower, IL 62942

Grand Tower is a town located in southwestern Jackson County. It borders the Mississippi River and has a rich history. The people of Grand Tower take pride in their city and hope that others will take the time to enjoy the sights of Southern Illinois.

Mark Twain

Author

Mark Twain was a renowned author who wrote novels such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, as well as The Prince and the Pauper.

"At Grand Tower, too, there was a railway, and another at Cape Girardeau. The former town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the water on the Missouri side of the river—a piece of nature’s fanciful handiwork—and is one of the most picturesque features of the scenery of that region. For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil’s Bake Oven—so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble anybody else’s bake oven; and the Devil’s Tea Table—this latter a great smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have the Devil’s Elbow and the Devil’s Race-course, and lots of other property of his which I cannot now call to mind."

-Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Lewis And Clark Trail

Meriwether Lewis

William Clark

The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail is 4,900 miles long and spans multiple states. Grand Tower is one of the many places located along this trail. This trail follows along Lewis and Clark's expedition that took place in 1803-1806. The trail lies across America with tons of history along the way.