Rome of the West

Saint John's Creek, in City of Washington, in Franklin County, Missouri. Originally named la rivière Saint-Jean by French colonists, the Spanish fort San Juan del Misuri was built somewhere on the banks on this creek.

The green matter floating on the water is duckweed: it is the smallest of flowering plants, eaten by ducks and botanists.

Most of the major watercourses in the state were named by French explorers, and these names were often accepted, untranslated, into the American gazetteer. The French word rivière corresponds to either of the English words 'river' or 'creek'; but because of this, numbers of little creeks in Missouri have the rather pretentious designation of "River", like the nearby Loutre River, which would be more properly translated as 'Otter Creek'. For this reason, Saint John's Creek was called Saint John's River on early maps.