They’re doing some great things out in St. Charles County. Yes, I know you might be really surprised to hear me say that, but it’s true. Let’s head out to the historic town of Cottleville (where yes, they were still repairing some damage from the unrelenting severe storms that have hit our region this spring),…
Tag: Parks
Lemp Brewery from the Air, 1930s
I really love this amazing aerial photograph of the Lemp Brewery, a decade after International Shoe had taken over. You can see how the shoe company had already added several floors onto a couple of buildings and altered the smokestack of the third boiler house or power plant to say ISCO. The railyard is still…
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…
Lake School, Revisited
Update: Creve Coeur has demolished the school; no word on whether the city will rename the park something different than Lake School Park. Well, this came out of left field. Creve Coeur wants to demolish the historic Lake School, which I looked at back on New Year’s Eve of 2021. I went by a couple…
Former Clay Pits, Reifsnider State Forest
We spotted another Boone’s Lick monument driving out west. We’d looked at another in Dardenne Prairie back in January of 2016. Our destination, however, was Reifsnider State Forest, which encompasses former clay pit mines, which have now been filled with water and stocked with fish. It is interesting that there was a brick industry out…
Former Kirkwood Athletic Fields
I was in the area so I thought I would take a look at the old Kirkwood Athletic Association ball fields down in the valley along the Meramec River. They’re looking pretty bad, to say the least, but apparently there’s a movement afoot to put them back into business. Originally, I have read, these were…
Public Square and Thereabouts, Alton
I made it back up to Alton for a little bit and checked out Public Square first. Easton Street, named after the founder of the city, intersects the square, and I suspect that originally it was planned to be a grand expanse surrounded by stores and whatnot. Instead, it is a quiet residential park, with…
Fountain Park, Revisited
Update: The Fountain Park neighborhood was severely damaged by the tornado in the afternoon of May 16, 2025. I first looked at Fountain Park way back in December of 2008, and its appearance has changed little. What is interesting is that the fountain in the middle was simplified at some point, as can be seen…
Millionaires’ Row, Revisited, Cairo
We finished up our tour of Cairo by revisiting Millionaires’ Row, which I still think is a weird name because there are not really that many mansions along it, and they’re not really that big, for that matter, befitting someone with a million or more dollars. First of all, what the heck happened to Riverlore,…
The Confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Cairo
We took a break from exploring the town and headed down to Fort Defiance Park, which is at the very tip of the peninsula where the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers is located, to have lunch. It is important to note that the actual Civil War fort was not located here as this…