I rolled into Union, the county seat of Franklin County, on a quiet afternoon last Saturday and took a look around. Union, like Washington to the north up Route 47, has seen explosive growth in the last thirty years as an exurban community in the larger St. Louis Metropolitan area, so there is a lot…
Category: Surrounding Region
Posts about the Surrounding Region in Missouri
Farmsteads, Southwest of Washington, Franklin County
Southwest of Washington in Franklin County along Route KK are a collection of beautiful central hall houses that sit on prominent hilltops, probably built as early as the 1840s but certainly complete before the Civil War. Certainly many of the original owners/builder of these houses were Germans brought to this country by the famous work…
Former Klondike Silica Quarry
Heading out towards to Augusta, there is an amazing St. Charles County park that encompasses the old Klondike Sandstone or Silica Quarry. Originally owned by German immigrant Wilhelm Engelage, the property was purchased by the Tavern Rock Sand Company in 1898, which first had to blow off the top 85 feet of bedrock before the…
Historic Farmstead, Route 94, Eastern St. Charles County
This farmstead along Highway 94 in the eastern “peninsula” portion of St. Charles County has several interesting buildings. The first one is the historic Greek Revival farmhouse, perhaps from the 1860s or thereabouts. There’s a nice barn that is collapsing, but the real interesting feature is below: it appears to be a grain silo, but…
Melvin Price Locks and Dam
Who doesn’t like a giant dam? Melvin Price Locks and Dam opened on October 10, 1989, replacing the aging Lock and Dam No. 26, which had major structural deficiencies. Dams have been getting the photographic treatment since at least Margaret Bourke White, which you can see here. The dam is so massive that it is…
Edward “Ted” and Pat Jones-Confluence Point State Park
I completed the trifecta of visiting all three of the corners of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers two Saturdays ago when we visited Edward “Ted” and Pat Jones-Confluence Point State Park at the furthest eastern edge of St. Charles County. Looking across the Mississippi River, you can spot the tower in Hartford…
House Springs, Jefferson County
Update: National Register property added in March of 2026. I stumbled onto the original small community of House Springs, which is built right on Gravois Road in Jefferson County. Route 30, which is frequently associated with Gravois, has been reoriented to the north and is four lane, divided highway in this area. Apparently some of…
James O’Fallon House, Barnhart
An audience member at one of my recent lectures alerted me to a very exciting house that I had never heard of built by James O’Fallon, brother of John O’Fallon, who of course was one of the wealthiest members of St. Louis before the Civil War (and has a gigantic family plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery)….
A Couple of Houses, St. Charles County
Dorris Keeven-Franke recommended a couple of cool old houses out in St. Charles County that are worth showing. The first one, located in northern St. Charles City, is the Thomas Lindsey House, built by slaves in the 1830s. The second house is located a ways away in Dardenne Prairie near 364 in the middle of…
The Church on the Hill, Emmaus
For the end of our tour, Jessica took us up the hill to the chapel of the former seminary, which is where there had been the most dramatic change in the grounds by the Hoffman Companies. As I’ve mentioned before, the trees were cleared and a 1940s building was demolished (you can see its foundation…