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Femme Osage, St. Charles County
The little town of Femme Osage, really no more than a handful of buildings, has the perfect setting along a creek. Across a bridge is a small church, surrounded by trees. A general store, at least at...
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Rock Church, Femme Osage
This church, also in Femme Osage, I thought warranted its own post. Made of stone, it has a sense of permanence to it, even if it is architecturally simple. The accompanying cemetery sits to the side...
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River Bottoms, St. Charles County
Some parts of the metropolitan region will never be developed hopefully. I had spotted this swath of river bottom north of the Missouri River from Google Maps in the past, and last weekend we drove...
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Labadie
Labadie, not far from the county line in Franklin County, is worth a visit. Still largely intact as a small town that dot Missouri, there are a few shops on the main street fronting the railroad...
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Rock Hill Presbyterian, Slightly Disassembled
Alerted by a reader of this site, my father and I ventured out to rural St. Charles County to see for ourselves the sad remains of the “carefully” preserved Rock Hill Presbyterian Church,...
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Wabash Railroad Bridge
The Wabash Railroad Bridge across the Missouri River is actually the second bridge to span the river at this location. The first, finished in 1871, was replaced by the current bridge in 1936. It is...
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Cedar Hill Mill, Jefferson County
Cedar Hill Mill sits on a location that has held a mill since 1847. The current mill was constructed by the Radeacker family. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this mill is its precarious setting...
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Goldenrod Showboat Up For Auction Saturday
I was contacted by a supporter of the effort to save the Goldenrod Showboat concerning the last potential chance to save the boat on Saturday, May 18: “Today I received the news that the...
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Containment Dome, Weldon Springs
A group of friends and I were in the neighborhood, so we headed out to the old Weldon Springs Munitions Plant, in southwestern St. Charles County. The history of the production of armaments, both...
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The Case of the Mysteriously Vanishing Rock Piles
I covered the shameful desecration of Rock Hill Presbyterian last year, and a friend and I drove out to see how progress on the reconstruction was going. It turns out the stones had been dumped on a...
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Stone Houses, Old Town St. Charles
I forgot how interesting the stone houses of Main Street in St. Charles are. They remind me of the earliest houses of Carondelet, and how people built houses before the brick industry began to thrive...
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Big House, Little House, Main Street, St. Charles
It’s interesting how so many of the small houses on Main Street survived over the last two centuries, while two story houses filled in between them.
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Storefronts, Main Street, St. Charles
Amongst the houses are more traditional storefronts. I don’t know how the picture above got so crooked.
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Various Houses, Main Street, St. Charles
It’s interesting to see how “regular” houses, in other words, not row houses, are mixed in with the older dwellings on Main Street.
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First Missouri State Capitol
Looks like there’s a new visitors’ center attached to the First Capitol. Interesting to imagine how state politics would have been different if the capital hadn’t been moved to Jefferson City.
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Old St. Charles Water Works
It’s since been turned into a restaurant, but the old water works is an impressive example of Art Deco architecture.
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North De Soto
Heading down the hill, there are more houses, but the lavishness of the houses decreases. Still, there is this magnificent church above and this house below. Down in the valley between two hills are...
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Main Street, De Soto
The Arlington Hotel anchors the wide expanse of railroad tracks that cuts through the heart of De Soto. Depending on who you ask on the streets of De Soto, the hotel was built in the 1850s or 1860s in...
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