page_title: Gateway Arch National Park
section_title: 2000s
hierarchical_section_title: Gateway Arch National Park / History / 2000s
context_page_description: Gateway Arch National Park, formerly known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial until 2018, is an American national park located in St. Louis, Missouri, near the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Gateway Arch and its immediate surroundings were initially designated as a national memorial by executive order on December 21, 1935, and redesignated as a national park in 2018. The park is maintained by the National Park Service.
  The memorial was established to commemorate:
  the Louisiana Purchase, and the subsequent westward movement of American explorers and pioneers;
  the first civil government west of the Mississippi River; and
  the debate over slavery raised by the Dred Scott case.
  The national park consists of the Gateway Arch, a steel catenary arch that has become the definitive icon of St. Louis; a 91-acre park along the Mississippi River on the site of the earliest buildings of the city; the Old Courthouse, a former state and federal courthouse where the Dred Scott case originated; and the 140,000 sq ft museum at the Gateway Arch.
context_section_description: The arch was featured on the Missouri state quarter in 2003.
  In 2007 St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and former Missouri Senator John Danforth asked the National Park Service to create a more "active" use of the grounds of the memorial and model it on Millennium Park in Chicago including the possibility of restaurants, fountains, ice skating, swimming, and other activities. The National Park Service was not in favor of the plan noting that the only other overt development pressure on national park property has been at the Jackson Hole Airport in Grand Teton National Park
caption: The Missouri state quarter depicting the Gateway Arch and the Lewis and Clark Expedition
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