Cape Rock Park
Cape Rock Park
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This is a 21-acre city park on the north side of Cape Girardeau offering great overlooks of the Mississippi River. It has no website of its own, but can be found mentioned in the city's website that I listed.
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Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.
Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.
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4.0
39 reviews
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12
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17
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7
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1
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2
Tånya R
Conway, AR21 contributions
Dec 2020
We stopped first at the bottom of this place that was by a railroad track. The place was very dirty. We drove up to the top and there was barely enough room for 3 cars to park. We walked up the steps to the Rock. We loved the view and flags. One of the info signs was scratched so much we couldn't read it. I hope they will fix this. In all other ways, it was a very cool place to stop.
Written 28 December 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
KDiy
Sullivan, MO137 contributions
Nov 2021 • Family
Quick stop to see the sights and read a little history. We stopped here and the Old Bridge to spend about 45 minutes. There are park tables and benches to have a lunch if you choose.
DRIVE TO THE BOTTOM!
DRIVE TO THE BOTTOM!
Written 7 November 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
DuaneLawder
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, United States3 contributions
Oct 2014 • Family
A wonderful way to spend the day enjoying the outdoors and the Mississippi river just a good time in nature.
Written 13 October 2014
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Butterflydays
Cape Girardeau, MO1,495 contributions
Apr 2019 • Couples
This is a smaller park and scenic overlook, but a very important one. It has it's historical place in time for the very beginning of our great city. It is definitely worth your time to go, if you are in the area.
Written 4 May 2019
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Hemingwayhero
Cathedral City, CA229 contributions
Aug 2016 • Family
Cape Girardeau isn't the only "cape" around here
Posted Friday, July 25, 2008, at 3:39 PM
Most think the state of Missouri is landlocked. Not so much. Not only does it’s eastern edge border the Mississippi, it happens to contain one of the few (if not the most well-known) inland capes in the country.
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, got it’s name back in the day when the early explorers and mapmakers used the word "cape" (or in French, "cap") quite frequently to describe bluffs and promontories along the Mississippi River. A "cape" could sit next to any body of water, not just the ocean.
Take, for example, this very early map from 1702:

Map by Guillaume de L'Isle. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
Along the river between modern-day St. Louis and Cairo, it shows five lesser known capes: Cap de la Grotte, Cap a l'hirondelle, Cap de roche, Cap St. Antoine, and Cape de roche blanche.
Jumping ahead to 1772, the names are different, but the cartographer still likes the word cape:

Map by Lieut. Ross. Image courtesy Library of Congress
This map shows Pointed Cape, Cape Swallow, Cape St. Côme or Cape la Roche, Cape Garlick, Cape St. Anthony, Cape Girardot, and Cape Cr'che. Maps through the rest of the 1700s continue to show many capes along the river. Then by around the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, carthographers started to drop the cape names, leaving only Cape Girardeau on most maps.
However, most modern maps show capes along the Mississippi River other than Cape Girardeau, including Cape Cinque Hommes and Cape La Croix. So while tourist brochures sometimes claim that Cape Girardeau is the "world's only inland cape", that's not really true.
Here is a listing of other capes:
Cape Cinque Hommes
"Cinque Hommes" means "five men" in French, but the name is probably a corruption of St. Cosme. In 1698, Father St. Cosme, with two other missionaries, explored the Mississippi River. He is said to have placed a "beautiful cross" on a large promontory on the west bank of the river, probably today's Tower Rock. Modern maps show Cape Cinque Hommes located a few miles north of Tower Rock at a massive bend in the river.

Cape Cinque Hommes, as seen from the Illinois side atop Fountain Bluff
The best view is from the overlook at the top of Fountain Bluff. Take Illinois Highway 3 north past Grand Tower and look for the turnoff for Happy Hollow Road (it's easy to miss). Continue on this road until you reach the top of a long climb up the hill. Keep your eyes peeled for the overlook on the left.
Cape La Croix
On his journey, Father St. Cosme also erected a second cross at a place dubbed Cape La Croix (or "Cape of the Cross"). This is now called Grays Point, where the river makes a sweeping bend between Cape Girardeau and Thebes. This name lives on as Cape La Croix Creek, which originally flowed into the Mississippi River near Grays Point.

The bend in the river at Grays Point, as seen from the water
Cape St. Anthony
This name, with various spellings, appears frequently on old maps and in historical documents, but the location is unclear, and may have changed over the years. The mostly likely location is Fountain Bluff, an isolated ridge above Grand Tower, Illinois, that would have been a formidable landmark for early river explorers. However, this could also have been on the Missouri shore, perhaps just downstream from Wittenberg.

Fountain Bluff looms in the distance, as seen from a road outside the town of Gorham. The river would have been located closer to the bluffs at one time.
Cape Fair
Southeast Missouri doesn't have a monopoly on inland capes. Cape Fair is a town next to Table Rock Reservoir in Stone County.
Cap au Gris
Upstream from the St. Louis area, Cap au Gris is a name that appears on maps of Lincoln County. It's a point on the Mississippi River east of the town of Winfield.
Cape Girardeau
In 1832, the {most important|most widely read} American poet of the first half of the 19th century, William Cullen Bryant, took a leave from his job as a newspaper editor to visit his brother and see the West. Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was the southwestern-most point of his trip. But Bryant was not just a poet, he was a rising editor of the most respected news paper of its time. And In 1826, Bryant served as assistant editor of the liberal New York Evening Post, in and 1829 became its editor-in-chief, serving in this capacity for 50 years. He was also a founder of the Republican Party. For seven years prior to his Western trip, he had also been one of the more important pioneers in American short fiction before the debuts of Poe and Hawthorne. But I digress….
On seeing Cape Rock (which gave the town its name) Bryant found inspiration for a story, "The Skeleton's Cave." That story exemplifies the naturalist approach to fiction -- and is considered to be the first and most precise expression of that approach to fiction as a "laboratory" studying human behavior known to us. The story and the commentary may be read in The Complete Stories of William Cullen Bryant.
Cape Rock is located in Cape Rock Park and you can drive to within 150 feet of it -the last 150 feet are paved, but the incline is rather steep toward the end. The 'Cape' in the city’s name refers to a rock promontory overlooking the Mississippi River, later destroyed unfortunately by the construction and expansion Louis Houck’s completed the basic lines of the Cape Girardeau Northern Railroad, the basic lines extending from the Thebes bridge to Cape and on to Jackson, Perryville and Perryville Junction opposite Chester, Ill., on the Frisco line.

Employees of Houck's road lined up in front of Engine No. 9 and the C.G.N. depot on Independence Street for this photo. (Missourian archives)railroad .
French soldier Jean Baptists Girardot was essential in the founding of the city of Cape Girardeau. As he was traveling through the area, he found this promontory overlooking the Mississippi River and chose this location to establish a trading post to serve the more than 20 Indian tribes that lived in the area. Trappers and travelers also discovered "Cape Girardot", and the city of Cape Girardeau, and Cape Girardeau County grew up around the trading post. As early as 1765, a bend in the Mississippi River about 60 miles (97 km) south of the French village of Ste. Genevieve had been referred to as Cape Girardot, or Girardeau, and the settlement there dates from 1793 when the Spanish government, which had secured Louisiana in 1764, granted Louis Lorimier, a French-Canadian, the right to establish a military trading post at “Cape Rock”, or Cape Girardeau at the former location of Girardot's trading post, and an attempt was made to rename the area Lorimont in his honor, but the name "Cape Girardot" (later modified to Girardeau) had already gained popular acceptance among the region's population.
This “Cape Rock,” a promontory jutting into the Mississippi River, is a classic example of an inland cape occurring along the banks of a river. ”Cape" is another word for a headland, which is an area of land adjacent to water on three sides. A large headland may also be called a peninsula. Long, narrow and high headlands may be called promontories. When headlands significantly affect ocean currents they are often called capes. The opposite to a headland is a bay which is a body of water surrounded by land on three sides. In all other cases, a headland is a piece of land that juts into the water from the main land coast line. Headlands are shaped by erosion. They are formed when the sea attacks a section of coast consisting of alternating bands of hard and soft waves. The banks of soft rock such as sand and clay, erode more quickly than those of more resistant hard rock such as chalk. This would form a headland, and did so at Cape Rock.
Probably the most well-known cape is Massachusett’s Cape Cod, extending 65 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, having a breadth of between 1–20 miles and covering more than 400 miles of shoreline.[One of the biggest barrier islands in the world, Cape Cod shields much of the Massachusetts coastline from North Atlantic storm waves. The cost of this protection comes in the form of the erosion of Cape's shoreline and the loss of its cliffs, while it protects the communities from Fairhaven to Marshfield. Cape Cod and the Islands are part of a continuous archipelagic region consisting of a thin line of islands stretching west to include Long Island in New York This region is historically and collectively known by naturalists as the Outer Lands. But, again, I digress….
Cape Rock Park, designating the most well-known inland capes in the country, is located in the northeast part of the city, and the park contains 21.3 acres and offers a breathtaking view of the mighty Mississippi River. The park was the original trading post established by Ensign Girardot. And this memorial "Cape Rock" sits atop the bluff of Girardot's trading post. If you’re in town, or just passing through Cape Girardeau, it’s well worth a stop.
Posted Friday, July 25, 2008, at 3:39 PM
Most think the state of Missouri is landlocked. Not so much. Not only does it’s eastern edge border the Mississippi, it happens to contain one of the few (if not the most well-known) inland capes in the country.
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, got it’s name back in the day when the early explorers and mapmakers used the word "cape" (or in French, "cap") quite frequently to describe bluffs and promontories along the Mississippi River. A "cape" could sit next to any body of water, not just the ocean.
Take, for example, this very early map from 1702:

Map by Guillaume de L'Isle. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
Along the river between modern-day St. Louis and Cairo, it shows five lesser known capes: Cap de la Grotte, Cap a l'hirondelle, Cap de roche, Cap St. Antoine, and Cape de roche blanche.
Jumping ahead to 1772, the names are different, but the cartographer still likes the word cape:

Map by Lieut. Ross. Image courtesy Library of Congress
This map shows Pointed Cape, Cape Swallow, Cape St. Côme or Cape la Roche, Cape Garlick, Cape St. Anthony, Cape Girardot, and Cape Cr'che. Maps through the rest of the 1700s continue to show many capes along the river. Then by around the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, carthographers started to drop the cape names, leaving only Cape Girardeau on most maps.
However, most modern maps show capes along the Mississippi River other than Cape Girardeau, including Cape Cinque Hommes and Cape La Croix. So while tourist brochures sometimes claim that Cape Girardeau is the "world's only inland cape", that's not really true.
Here is a listing of other capes:
Cape Cinque Hommes
"Cinque Hommes" means "five men" in French, but the name is probably a corruption of St. Cosme. In 1698, Father St. Cosme, with two other missionaries, explored the Mississippi River. He is said to have placed a "beautiful cross" on a large promontory on the west bank of the river, probably today's Tower Rock. Modern maps show Cape Cinque Hommes located a few miles north of Tower Rock at a massive bend in the river.

Cape Cinque Hommes, as seen from the Illinois side atop Fountain Bluff
The best view is from the overlook at the top of Fountain Bluff. Take Illinois Highway 3 north past Grand Tower and look for the turnoff for Happy Hollow Road (it's easy to miss). Continue on this road until you reach the top of a long climb up the hill. Keep your eyes peeled for the overlook on the left.
Cape La Croix
On his journey, Father St. Cosme also erected a second cross at a place dubbed Cape La Croix (or "Cape of the Cross"). This is now called Grays Point, where the river makes a sweeping bend between Cape Girardeau and Thebes. This name lives on as Cape La Croix Creek, which originally flowed into the Mississippi River near Grays Point.

The bend in the river at Grays Point, as seen from the water
Cape St. Anthony
This name, with various spellings, appears frequently on old maps and in historical documents, but the location is unclear, and may have changed over the years. The mostly likely location is Fountain Bluff, an isolated ridge above Grand Tower, Illinois, that would have been a formidable landmark for early river explorers. However, this could also have been on the Missouri shore, perhaps just downstream from Wittenberg.

Fountain Bluff looms in the distance, as seen from a road outside the town of Gorham. The river would have been located closer to the bluffs at one time.
Cape Fair
Southeast Missouri doesn't have a monopoly on inland capes. Cape Fair is a town next to Table Rock Reservoir in Stone County.
Cap au Gris
Upstream from the St. Louis area, Cap au Gris is a name that appears on maps of Lincoln County. It's a point on the Mississippi River east of the town of Winfield.
Cape Girardeau
In 1832, the {most important|most widely read} American poet of the first half of the 19th century, William Cullen Bryant, took a leave from his job as a newspaper editor to visit his brother and see the West. Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was the southwestern-most point of his trip. But Bryant was not just a poet, he was a rising editor of the most respected news paper of its time. And In 1826, Bryant served as assistant editor of the liberal New York Evening Post, in and 1829 became its editor-in-chief, serving in this capacity for 50 years. He was also a founder of the Republican Party. For seven years prior to his Western trip, he had also been one of the more important pioneers in American short fiction before the debuts of Poe and Hawthorne. But I digress….
On seeing Cape Rock (which gave the town its name) Bryant found inspiration for a story, "The Skeleton's Cave." That story exemplifies the naturalist approach to fiction -- and is considered to be the first and most precise expression of that approach to fiction as a "laboratory" studying human behavior known to us. The story and the commentary may be read in The Complete Stories of William Cullen Bryant.
Cape Rock is located in Cape Rock Park and you can drive to within 150 feet of it -the last 150 feet are paved, but the incline is rather steep toward the end. The 'Cape' in the city’s name refers to a rock promontory overlooking the Mississippi River, later destroyed unfortunately by the construction and expansion Louis Houck’s completed the basic lines of the Cape Girardeau Northern Railroad, the basic lines extending from the Thebes bridge to Cape and on to Jackson, Perryville and Perryville Junction opposite Chester, Ill., on the Frisco line.

Employees of Houck's road lined up in front of Engine No. 9 and the C.G.N. depot on Independence Street for this photo. (Missourian archives)railroad .
French soldier Jean Baptists Girardot was essential in the founding of the city of Cape Girardeau. As he was traveling through the area, he found this promontory overlooking the Mississippi River and chose this location to establish a trading post to serve the more than 20 Indian tribes that lived in the area. Trappers and travelers also discovered "Cape Girardot", and the city of Cape Girardeau, and Cape Girardeau County grew up around the trading post. As early as 1765, a bend in the Mississippi River about 60 miles (97 km) south of the French village of Ste. Genevieve had been referred to as Cape Girardot, or Girardeau, and the settlement there dates from 1793 when the Spanish government, which had secured Louisiana in 1764, granted Louis Lorimier, a French-Canadian, the right to establish a military trading post at “Cape Rock”, or Cape Girardeau at the former location of Girardot's trading post, and an attempt was made to rename the area Lorimont in his honor, but the name "Cape Girardot" (later modified to Girardeau) had already gained popular acceptance among the region's population.
This “Cape Rock,” a promontory jutting into the Mississippi River, is a classic example of an inland cape occurring along the banks of a river. ”Cape" is another word for a headland, which is an area of land adjacent to water on three sides. A large headland may also be called a peninsula. Long, narrow and high headlands may be called promontories. When headlands significantly affect ocean currents they are often called capes. The opposite to a headland is a bay which is a body of water surrounded by land on three sides. In all other cases, a headland is a piece of land that juts into the water from the main land coast line. Headlands are shaped by erosion. They are formed when the sea attacks a section of coast consisting of alternating bands of hard and soft waves. The banks of soft rock such as sand and clay, erode more quickly than those of more resistant hard rock such as chalk. This would form a headland, and did so at Cape Rock.
Probably the most well-known cape is Massachusett’s Cape Cod, extending 65 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, having a breadth of between 1–20 miles and covering more than 400 miles of shoreline.[One of the biggest barrier islands in the world, Cape Cod shields much of the Massachusetts coastline from North Atlantic storm waves. The cost of this protection comes in the form of the erosion of Cape's shoreline and the loss of its cliffs, while it protects the communities from Fairhaven to Marshfield. Cape Cod and the Islands are part of a continuous archipelagic region consisting of a thin line of islands stretching west to include Long Island in New York This region is historically and collectively known by naturalists as the Outer Lands. But, again, I digress….
Cape Rock Park, designating the most well-known inland capes in the country, is located in the northeast part of the city, and the park contains 21.3 acres and offers a breathtaking view of the mighty Mississippi River. The park was the original trading post established by Ensign Girardot. And this memorial "Cape Rock" sits atop the bluff of Girardot's trading post. If you’re in town, or just passing through Cape Girardeau, it’s well worth a stop.
Written 28 November 2016
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
James N
94 contributions
May 2016 • Solo
Great overlook of the river. Not much here. But work a quick stop. Not a lot of parking. Don't bring an RV. Not enough room.
Written 20 June 2016
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Jerry M
Saint Louis, MO737 contributions
Jun 2015
Historic monument denotes a wonderful place to see the Mississippi at it's best! This is a romantic place at nights for those that enjoy a bluff view with a loved one. Enjoy!
Written 19 July 2015
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Sherry J
Cape Girardeau, MO72 contributions
Jul 2015 • Family
Cape Rock is where it all started and it is a high point along the Mississippi river and with beautiful scenic views of Missouri and Illinois.
Written 8 July 2015
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
NNMinAL
Daphne, AL271 contributions
Apr 2014 • Friends
Admittedly, I grew up in Cape and this is one of the places I go most every time I'm in town. It's not really that great of a park, but it is an iconic view of the Mississippi River and shows you how CAPE Girardeau got its name as it is located on a point of land jutting out into the river.
Written 2 June 2014
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Loretta B
Cabool, MO499 contributions
Nov 2013 • Friends
WE went to the Park early one morning, and watched the sun come up over the Mississippi River. Nice.
Written 9 November 2013
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Yes. Just give it a few weeks, until the river goes down, and try again then. More rain expected again this week, will only add to the flooding problems.
Written 3 June 2019
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