In the 1730’s, a Frenchman named Jean Baptiste Girardot, for whom Cape Girardeau is named, established a trading post on the west bank of the Mississippi River. However, Girardot was a trader, not a settler, and by the middle 1700’s Girardot had moved on. In 1793, the Spanish Government gave Frenchman Louis Lorimier a land grant to establish another trading post near the river, a few miles south of the site previously established by Girardot. Early in 1806, the town of Cape Girardeau was laid out in lots. A petition for incorporation was presented in 1808. Population expansion at first was slow; however, the age of steamboats allowed easy movement of manufactured goods on the river, which expedited growth. When the railroads were completed, it is said that the city’s population doubled in just a few months.