How to Take Kirksville’s Free Self-Guided Historic Site Tour

Kirksville has a free self-guided historic-site tour built around the TravelStorys mobile app.

It is not one fixed walking loop.

The City describes it as a collection of 100 points of interest that can be explored at your own pace, with Mayor Zac Burden narrating historical stories for 36 locations.

Step 1: install TravelStorys

The City's current instructions direct visitors to install the TravelStorys app on a phone or smart device.

Once inside the app:

1. open the map to find nearby tours, or search for Kirksville;
2. select the Kirksville tour;
3. download it;
4. begin exploring.

The City does not currently publish a separate admission charge for the tour.

GPS triggers stories

The tour uses the phone's location to recognize when the visitor approaches a highlighted site.

Narrated stories can then play automatically near the relevant location.

That makes it different from a normal podcast where you manually choose every track.

There is no required order

Visit Kirksville says the locations can be explored:

• on foot;
• by bicycle;
• in any order;
• at the visitor's own pace.

That makes it possible to use the tour over several outings instead of attempting all 100 points in one day.

Do all 100 points have narration?

The current City page says 100 locations are highlighted and 36 are narrated by the mayor.

It does not say all 100 contain full narrated audio.

The safest interpretation is:

• 100 mapped points of interest;
• 36 specifically identified narrated history stops.

Do not turn those into the same number.

There is no official single start point

Current City and tourism instructions do not establish one required starting location.

Choose a logical cluster based on where you already are.

Downtown is an obvious place to begin because many historic buildings are close together, but it is not the only valid starting point.

Use normal street-safety judgment

A map pin does not guarantee that the shortest straight line between two sites is the safest walking or cycling route.

Use:

• sidewalks;
• marked crossings;
• current street conditions;
• normal bicycle rules.

Do not create shortcuts through private property.

Pair the tour with deeper research

The TravelStorys tour works well as an introduction.

If one site turns into a research rabbit hole, Kirksville has deeper local-history resources including:

• Adair County Historical Society;
• Truman Special Collections;
• City historic-preservation material.

See Adair County Historical Society Museum: A Visitor and Research Guide.

Another architecture-specific tour exists

Kirksville also has an official Irwin Dunbar architecture itinerary.

See The Irwin Dunbar Architecture of Kirksville: A Self-Guided Local History Tour.

The TravelStorys tour is the broader citywide option.

Its best feature may be that there is no historical-tour police officer demanding that you visit Stop 17 before Stop 18.