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Augusta is a small city in St. Charles County, Missouri, perched on bluffs above the Missouri River about 37 miles west of St. Louis.

The town was founded in 1836 as Mount Pleasant by Leonard Harold, a settler who had followed Daniel Boone into St. Charles County, and it was a prosperous grain, livestock and wine-grape trading center by the time it incorporated as Augusta in 1855.

Augusta sits in the Missouri Rhineland, where German immigrants found hillsides that reminded them of the Rhine Valley and began planting vineyards in the mid-1800s.

In 1980 the Augusta viticultural area became the first American Viticultural Area (AVA) ever recognized by the U.S. federal government — earning the designation before California's Napa Valley.

Mount Pleasant Estates, founded in 1859, is the oldest winery in the Augusta AVA and still operates in town alongside Augusta Winery.

Prohibition wiped out most of Augusta's vineyards, and the local wine industry only revived when Mount Pleasant Estates reopened in the 1960s.

In the 1870s the Missouri River cut a new channel and left Augusta without its riverboat landing, though the town gained several hundred acres of fertile river bottom land in exchange.

Augusta is a popular stop on the Katy Trail State Park, the rail-trail that passes along the foot of its bluffs.

Since 2020 the Hoffmann Family of Companies has purchased more than two dozen properties in and around Augusta — including four wineries and six vineyards — in a push to build the town into a major wine-tourism destination.

Despite its wine-country fame, Augusta is tiny: the 2020 census counted just 270 residents, and the 2010 census recorded only 112 households.