The "Meeting in Missouri" along the historic, mostly two-lane, U.S. Route 66 in Cuba, Missouri, named after the island of Cuba in 1857 for reasons that are murky today. What is clear is that Cuba is Missouri's unchallenged "mural city," thanks to its reverence for the historic "Mother Road" — U.S. highway 66, the old two-lane road that ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Cuba and Missouri, to the Pacific Ocean in California. The mural depicts a famous meeting between French explorers in the area and members of the Osage Indian tribe — the largest in what would later become Missouri. Photo by Carol Highsmith, 2021.