Under An Hour From St. Louis Is Missouri's Up-And-Coming City With A Revitalized Downtown

Whether you love small towns or you're just looking for a welcoming base of operations during a visit to the St. Louis Arch, it's hard to beat the up-and-coming town of Festus. In the past decade, the population has grown almost 20% to 14,300 people, bringing along new restaurants, parks, and activities.

Only about 40 minutes from the fun, budget-friendly activities of St. Louis via Interstate 55, Festus is continuing to invest in improvements to the revitalized downtown and local parks. For visitors, that means better signage and sidewalks and a partnership with sister town Crystal City. The neighboring destinations have gotten a $500,000 grant to connect their two downtowns into a pedestrian-friendly experience. Just a few miles from the Mississippi River, the area would be a great stopping-off point for a riverside road trip that will knock 10 states off your bucket list.

Downtown Festus hosts activities year-round, including February's Gals on Main: A Galentine's Event, with a DJ, shopping specials and a craft fair, and StreetFest, which features bands performing on two stages and a kid-focused entrepreneur market every October. 

Clustered from East Main Street to West Main Street, diners can find everything from a French steakhouse to pizza in downtown Festus. Locals point to Main & Mill Brewery, housed in an original saloon from 1884, as instrumental in the downtown revitalization, with one Yelper calling it a community hub. The restaurant offers a rotating selection of beers crafted in-house, along with burgers, sandwiches, and dips served with bottomless tortilla chips.

It's perhaps appropriate that the town is becoming known as a dining and drinking destination. Back in the late 1800s, the area, on the outskirts of neighboring Crystal City, grew into the entertainment district for the workers at Crystal Plate Glass Co. At one time the largest glass factory in the country, the business was built on valuable natural resources in the area, including rich deposits of silica sand. The district became known as Tanglefoot for the brush that caught people when leaving the saloons after a few whiskeys. Legend has it that the owner of a local 5 & Dime store, seeking a more reputable name for her town, stuck her finger in a Bible and landed on Festus, which is not far from another quaint Missouri city with a historic downtown and a cute Main Street.

The Tanglefoot name lives on at Tanglefoot Dance Hall, which offers lessons in two-step and line dancing six days a week, including family fun days on Sundays. Families will also enjoy downtown activities like the Children's Reindeer Ramble in December. Festus hosts even more events everyone will enjoy just a few miles from Main Street. Larry G. Crites Park is a five-minute drive, offering year-round programming including the Firecracker Festival held each June, with carnival rides and a fishing derby, and light shows featuring 120,000 sparkling bulbs for both Halloween and Christmas.

Crites Park is also home to Turtle Cove, a brand-new splash pad for the warmer weather, as well as a 3-acre lake stocked with catfish and a 1.5-mile bike trail. In fact, for a small town, Festus has outsized outdoor amenities, from a dedicated bird sanctuary at Sunset Park to a disc golf course. With purposeful revitalization, it's a small package made for recreation.