- I'm Veronica Mohesky, and I'm here with Jody Sowell, President of the Missouri Historical Society.

So, Jody, I was always told that St.

Louis has the best tasting water, but I hear that wasn't always the case.

- Not at all.

In fact, if St.

Louis could introduce itself, it would probably say I'm the place whose drinking water was once more solid than liquid.

That's because before we cleaned up the water supply for the 1904 World's Fair, we pretty much just pulled everything straight out of the Mississippi, water, mud, everything, and put it into our drinking glasses.

In fact, Mark Twain once said, "If you let a glass of St.

Louis water sit long enough, you could separate land from water, just like in Genesis."

So what did St.

Louisans think of this water they were drinking?

Well, a lot of St.

Louisans loved it.

In fact, some St.

Louisans were said, if they were going to other cities that happened to have clean water supplies, they would take jars of Mississippi mud with them so they could mix it into their water whenever they were somewhere else and feel like they were back home in St.

Louis.

Yikes.

Well, we're going to get into how they fix this problem in this segment, but I do have a question for you.

Does St.

Louis have the best tasting water?

It tastes pretty great to me, even better when you know what it used to taste like.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Jody.

Let's take a look at the segment.

The quality of St.

Louis water has certainly fluctuated over the years.

In the early 19th century, late 18th century, people were drinking their water out of springs and cisterns.

It was coming out of the ground and it was pretty clear.

But as the city got bigger and bigger, they couldn't just use that water, so they had to start taking water from the Mississippi.

Amanda Clark is a public historian at the Missouri Historical Society.

That's when people started drinking this murky brown water, and if you lived here, you were used to it, and your body was used to it, and it was something that was, you know, people thought it made them healthier, actually, to drink that kind of water.

Author Mark Twain has many quotes about St.

Louis' water, but he once said, "Every tumblerful holds an acre of land in its solution."

St.

Louisans of the time seemed to enjoy the taste though.

If they went to a new city that had clearer water, they could mix some of that Mississippi mud with that clearer water so they didn't lose the benefits of the mud back in St.

Louis.

Our drinking water was often a surprise to visitors.

If you hadn't been here before, it would have been a shock to your system in many ways.

It would have been a visual shock.

It would have been a taste shock.

And on your body for a couple of days, it took a few days to adjust to this new water.

Unclean water, of course, also spread diseases like cholera, dysentery, and typhoid.

But there were other unusual problems with the water, too.

But then there were things that made their way from the Mississippi River into the water system that were a problem, such as eels.

Eels in the late 19th century, early 20th century, eels were a pretty regular problem in the pipes.

They would find them in toilets.

They would find them in sinks.

The city was working on modernizing its water system in the late 1800s with additions like the standpipe water towers.

So the water towers in St.

Louis are these gorgeous architectural pieces, right?

But they were at the time the forefront of technology.

The first one was built was the Grand, the one that's on North Grand.

It's a big Corinthian column.

And that is actually from our earliest water movement.

Right.

So we're not doing water purification yet, but moving water through the city.

Soon after, two more standpipe towers were added, the Bissell Street and Compton Hill Water Tower.

But the towers only helped move the water, which was still murky.

Other river cities would have faced similar issues, but St.

Louis' problem was made worse in 1900 when the Chicago River was permanently reversed.

Which meant its raw sewage was then being pumped into the Mississippi River and coming down towards St.

Louis.

So that increased the need for purification and cleaning the water.

The water quality issue became increasingly important as the 1904 World's Fair loomed closer and closer.

So the great thing about the World's Fair, you know, it was something to showcase all kinds of technologies.

And here we had a local technology that we could show off, which was just clear water.

You know, when they were planning, you know, making plans for the fair and making these designs for big, beautiful buildings and these waterfalls, you know, the waterfalls couldn't be shooting mud through them.

That would be a totally different vibe than what they were going for.

Fortunately, a local scientist named John Wixford developed a process to separate sediment from the water.

And so they had to, with just weeks to go before the fair opened, they were still trying to figure out how to clear the water, which is when the Wixford process finally came through.

They figured it out and that's when we had clear water.

Wixford was hailed as a hero for his work and other cities learned from our success.

So the Wixford process is still the base that we use now, which is chemical separation of the sediment in the water and the clear.

So it's actually really interesting.

And it's an example for other cities.

And our water purification is actually one of the things that St.

Louis has that it can say, "Hey, we figured this out."

And then other cities were able to modernize after that.

And St.

Louis is known for having great tasting water to this day.

Not just people that come in and test it, but you come across a lot of chefs and people that, you know, we have a big food scene here.

And a lot of people say that they, and they credit the good water here in St.

Louis for the good food that they are able to make.

But it has to be clarified, the water we drink now doesn't come from the Mississippi, it actually comes from the Missouri.

So just one more thing that we can say in that list of things we should be really proud of and that we can call our own.