File:Irving-carson-arrow.jpg

Summary
Meeting of Washington Irving and Kit Carson at Arrow Rock, Missouri from a mural in Missouri State Capitol Painted by Ernest L. Blumenschein in 1923-1924 this is based on an apocryphal event perpetuated by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the early 1900s. Irving passed through the area in 1832, two years before Joseph Huston began construction of the Tavern. Kit Carson was a relatively unknown young man who was trapping in the mountains near Taos at this time. He did not begin to acquire any notoriety until after 1847. This and several other unsubstantiated tales about the tavern caused Charles van Ravenswaay, Director of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis to write the Tavern Board of Managers in 1938, "During the past number of years I have watched with growing concern the development of various 'legends' regarding its [Tavern] history...Surely few buildings in Missouri can, with more honesty, claim a richer history than the Tavern."