Given the length and the impending winter, Laclède began prepping for the journey immediately. In August, he and a small crew, which included his common law wife's son René Auguste Chouteau. Jr. Though few outposts or trading posts were already set-up, many Europeans had made the journey up the Mississippi River, making the trip more monotonous than exciting. They arrived at the confluence in December. The confluence area was too marshy to build a town, so they selected a site downriver. Legend has it that St. Louis was founded on Saint Valentine's Day of 1764.