[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 130 (Wednesday, July 31, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S5225]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Missouri

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, first of all, I wanted to talk about 
everything you could be doing in Missouri in the next month or so with 
your family, and then I was told I have 5 minutes. That seems to be an 
impossible restriction for me. So let me see how many things I can talk 
about here as we end the summer travel season. But there are other 
people traveling after the summer. Some families still have their 
summer vacation. Some schools start after Labor Day, some before. I am 
sure I will be leaving things out that I will be glad to talk about at 
a later time. Let me first just mention a couple of our national parks.
  If you leave my hometown of Springfield, MO, and you head west, 
pretty quickly you get to the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield park. 
There was a battle in August of 1861. Several thousand people fought 
who really weren't prepared to fight. They weren't trained. They 
weren't ready. It was a big battle that made a big difference in what 
happened in Missouri in the war.
  Not too far from there, you get to Diamond, MO, where there is the 
George Washington Carver National Monument. It is a 240-acre park on 
the farm where George Washington Carver grew up. He was born as a slave 
but was quickly freed and raised by the older White couple who lived 
there. He managed to get to school there a little bit and in those 
years after the Civil War became a leading scientist and spokesman for 
agriculture in the country. This monument was established in 1943, and 
it was the first national park dedicated to an African American.
  I have to circle back a little bit to get to Branson. With 50 
theaters in Branson, there are more theater seats than Broadway. It is 
never too early to find a show you want to see in Branson.
  In Silver Dollar City, in the summer of last year, their great park 
was named the No. 1 Christmas venue in America to visit.
  Now back to my hometown of Springfield, which is the way this comes 
up on my list. It is the home of Bass Pro Shops. The Wonders of 
Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium right there by Bass Pro was named 
``America's Best Aquarium'' by USA TODAY Travel last year. That museum 
has 3,000 fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibious animals there.
  A park we just added to our National Park System--I will pop right up 
to almost St. Louis, to St. Genevieve, where you have French 
architecture that dates back to the 1700s. This is the first summer 
that there has been a full-time park person there. This park is rising 
out of what the community has preserved so well for so long. There are 
a number of houses there that reflect that early French architecture 
along the Mississippi River.
  South of there, at Perryville, is the full-sized replica of the 
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. There have been some traveling 
memorials, and there are a couple of memorials that are miniature in 
some way, but in Perryville, MO, you can see a full-sized replica on a 
47-acre family farm that Jim Eddleman and his family made possible, 
along with other donations. I was there not too long ago, and I was at 
the Vietnam Wall here not too long ago. They are in different places, 
but they are the same wall, exactly the same size, with the same names, 
and are the same in every way.
  On the other side of our State, in Kansas City, is the Negro Leagues 
Baseball Museum. Just this week, Senator Kaine and I introduced 
legislation for a memorial coin to benefit the Negro Leagues Baseball 
Museum in Kansas City. Congressmen Cleaver and Stivers in the House did 
the same thing.
  While you are in Kansas City here at the end of the centennial of 
World War I, the World War I Museum in Kansas City was the World War I 
Memorial dedicated in the 1920s. It is the No. 1 place in America to 
visit and think about the war and the impact of that war in the 100 
years that have passed since then.
  If you want to go north to St. Joseph, you, of course, pass some 
baseball stadiums and football fields that are good places to visit if 
you are there at the right time. In St. Joseph, there is the Pony 
Express Museum. The Pony Express didn't last very long, but it became a 
very important part of the lore of the West, these young riders--before 
the telegraph--taking a message as quickly as they could ride and 
changing from one rider to another to go from St. Joe to California.
  I wouldn't want to leave out the Mark Twain Boyhood Home in Hannibal. 
There was a time when Mark Twain was by far the best-read American 
author anywhere in the world. Hannibal is the setting for the classic 
American novel ``The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.''
  We will circle right back down to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. More 
than 135 million people have visited the arch since 1963. It just went 
through a major overhaul and a 60-year renewal of the facility, better 
connecting it to downtown. It is the first example of what the National 
Park Service hopes will be the next century of the park, a true public-
private partnership.
  In going to all these places, we drove by lots of lakes and lots of 
fishing and boating. There are a lot of things to do in our State. Like 
many States, tourism is our second biggest industry. We look forward to 
people visiting us this summer and next year and the years after that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.