Part of the National Park Service, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, was completed in 1965 as a monument to Thomas Jefferson and the “opening” of the west. Today, the exhibits at the Museum of Westward Expansion, located beneath the Arch, present a more complex history of the territory. Similarly, historians continue to examine and debate the negative and positive consequences of the Louisiana Purchase and its aftermath. Some regard it as a great achievement, while others view it as the beginning of a tragic chapter in our history.