A new memoir portrays the town of Rocheport as it existed in another era.
It is perhaps the fate of every city known for nurturing struggling artists to become so mythologized by the legacies they leave behind that it one day becomes devoid of the very amenities that attracted them there. These include cheap rent, cheap food, and some semblance of community. In the 1920s, American artists immigrated to Paris in droves seeking favorable currency exchange rates and the company of their peers. Meanwhile, in New York City in the 1960s, an upstart folk singer, say, could lease an apartment in Manhattan for less than $1,000 per month in today’s money, and considerably cheaper options existed for those willing to live a more nomadic lifestyle.
The Euro has been stronger than the US dollar for most of the past decade, and Manhattan’s average rent today is over $5,000. The artists we associate with these places—from Ernest Hemingway and Josephene Baker to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez—left behind a vision of a particular moment in time that helped those cities develop into the posh, expensive places they are today.
It seems odd to consider a river town in mid-Missouri with just over 200 residents beneath the same lens as Paris and New York City, but a new memoir from Kristen Heitkamp about life in Rocheport invites this comparison. Cabin Fever, published this year during Rocheport’s bicentennial, chronicles the author’s life in a small cabin on Gaw Street from the late 1970s through the early ’90s. When Kristen arrived, the town, according to her, “had long squandered her fortunes.” The once busy river port had no school, no bank, and the trains that rolled through on the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad no longer stopped. What the town did have, however, was affordable rent, natural charm, and a collection of neighbors who “pretty much lived in each other’s pockets,” as Kristen puts it.
The memoir relates the stories of these neighbors, each with their own sets of idiosyncrasies. There’s George Swope who was apparently born in 1899 and once cured a case of frostbite with a bottle of whiskey, Joe Cochran who left his home at 13 and fought in World War II, and Sweetie who claimed to have seen Blind Boone perform at an ice cream supper in the little town as a child. They age, they repeat their stories to Kristen, and we see their neighborly bonds strengthen even as their antics sometimes frustrate our narrator (for example, when George asks for a ride to the grocery store in nearby New Franklin then leaves his wallet there, forcing them to drive back for it in a snowstorm).
As the residents’ lives change, so too does the town. A sewer is built. The MKT is turned into the Katy Trail. A bakery arrives but eventually goes out of business. The old schoolhouse becomes a bed-and-breakfast, and outlines of the town as it exists today begin to emerge.
At one point in the memoir, Kristen expresses the skepticism she felt at the time that Rocheport would become a draw for tourists. Today, walking on the Katy Trail past B&Bs and restaurants, this trajectory seems inevitable. Although the town’s transformation has sometimes been referred to as a revitalization, it’s difficult to avoid reflecting on what’s been lost with the arrival of weekend visitors and increasing property values.
Perhaps one measure of the town’s character is the number of artists living and working in it. For now, there are still plenty, and we at least have Kristen’s book to transport us back to the old Rocheport to see what’s changed and what’s stayed the same.
This article was originally published in the July/August 2025 edition of Missouri Life.
