THE RRR IS NOW ONLINE!

Welcome!  Just click on one of the categorized page tabs above, or scroll down to start reading the online Rock Road Reporter. Please follow us and share this link on Facebook and Twitter, or by e-mails to friends and associates.

We still have a lot of work to do to update this blog and post our current and past news stories and features, but we're working on it! 

If you have a local news tip, or would like to contribute to our online blog, please contact me at: rockroadreporter@gmail.com  

Steve Erdelen 

Streetcars Changed the Course of St. Charles Rock Road

By Wayne Brasler

Thanks to the M-G-M film musical “Meet Me in St. Louis” the city will forever be associated with its trolley system.

  In fact it was one of the most comprehensive in the nation, and notable because so much of the streetcar lines traveled not on streets but through woodlands and rural areas to far distant spots.  Including the city of St. Charles across the Missouri River!

  The streetcar line in the film really did exist; it was the Hodiamont line and it passed the west of the Wellston Loop at Easton (now Martin Luther King Boulevard) Avenue at Hodiamont.

  That was where the St. Charles and Western streetcar line commenced its journey.  The history of the Rock Road, from its beginning as a westward overland passage from the Mississippi to the Missouri, is well-known.  But few people know the Rock Road had for many decades as a component a heavy-duty electric railroad line from Wellston to St. Charles.

  Few histories accurately record the route of the line and few record the fact that the present location of the Rock Road isn’t the original location for much of its route. That’s because bit by bit the road was rerouted to conform to the rail line.

  The line was built by the enterprising James Houseman beginning in 1897 in stages westward, originally terminating on the east side of the Missouri River, where passengers rode ferry boats across to St. Charles.  Then in 1904 a bridge was built over the river and the trolley line terminal still stands just off where its exit landed in St. Charles.

  The line was double-tracked in the middle of the road west from Wellston.  Just east of Lucas and Hunt Road it traveled over a humped wooden bridge with the rails laid in the wood.  At Lucas and Hunt the line met the St. Peters line, a single-tracked operation which went north up Lucas and Hunt to Natural Bridge.

  West of Lucas and Hunt each track spread to the south and north sides of the Rock Road.  Later, when the Road was widened to four lanes from two, the streetcars rode in the middle of the road until reaching St. Vincent’s Lane in Pagedale, where they spread to the outside lanes.

  In the early days the line met the Cross Country line which came north up Ferguson Avenue from Vernon to serve visitors to St. Vincent’s Sanitarium.  At Lucas Lane, which is now Normandy Drive, there was a siding to serve the Normandie Country Club and Golf Course.  At North and South Road both rails moved to the north side of the Rock Road on an impressive rail highway.

  At Brown Road (which was Birdie Avenue), where the car barn was located (the bus barn north of it still stands, hidden behind Walgreen’s Drugs), the line narrowed to one rail, and at what is now Cypress Road, the Bridgeton Line branched off to head north for what is now Lambert Field.

  Most histories have the line following the Rock Road right out to St. Charles, but not so.  At what is now Lindbergh, the rails turned northwestward to reach the town of Bridgeton, eventually curving to where the Rock Road now runs just west of I-270.  The line crossed Natural Bridge just east of its junction with the Rock Road and a siding there served Westlake Amusement park at that junction.  Many histories have the streetcar running in front of Westlake Park, but it actually ran in back.

  The streetcar line west of Westlake Park was built on an embankment because a flood plain commenced at that location, and therein lies another tale.  With rail traffic declining because of the automobile, the streetcar line was cut back to Dammerman Stop, one third mile west of Woodson Road at what is now Airline Avenue, in 1932 and assumed the name of the Woodson Road streetcar.  That’s because Woodson Road was not located where it is now, but west of that location and today it survives as Edmundson Road.

  When the streetcar stopped running west of Woodson, the state was able to recreate St. Charles Rock Road west of the junction with Natural Bridge Road to highway standards.  St. Charles Rock Road originally west of I-270 meandered along the Fee Fee Creek, which was prone to flooding.  When the Road was relocated to the route of the streetcar line to St. Charles, the road was renamed Old St. Charles and later Boenker Road, which today is unfit to drive on.

  In fact, before that, several portions of the Rock Road in the St. John and St. Ann areas were called many other names before commencing at Adie Road and continuing west as Old St. Charles Road.

  Amazingly, parts of the streetcar right-of-way remain, most notably at Fee Fee, where “Electric Avenue” at one time stood just north of the Rock Road and a short patch of right-of-way and electrical sustation still stands on the west side of the road.  The right-of-way is also visible north on McKelvey Road, where it follows a creek and winds through a townhouse development, poles still in place and, most amazingly, a short stretch of the embankment is visible on the south side of the Rock Road just east of Earth City Expressway.

  James Houseman was very proud of his electric line, nicknamed the “All Saints” because it served so many cemeteries.  His luxurious cars included toilet facilities and phones, kept to schedules, stopped wherever passengers awaited (at night lighting newspapers to signal the motorman to halt) and were equipped with loud air horns and gigantic headlights to pierce the dark countryside.

  What a saga!  And now almost all forgotten or, if remembered, gotten wrong.  Not now.

United we stand, divided we kneel.

By Steve Erdelen (From Summer 2011 Hard Copy Edition)

If you turn back a page, you’ll notice a bug on page three. Not a real bug, but what is known as a union printer’s bug. That in itself is no big deal, but I happen to be very proud that our magazine is now being printed at a union printing shop. There was never any kind of protest against our magazine by any union member or any pressure applied by anyone to print at a union shop. It was my decision to go that direction, and a very competitive bid helped me along. Decisions like that are made every day by millions of small businesses around this country, and our business is no different. The only thing that sets us apart from the vast majority of other small businesses is that our product is a direct reflection of the communities in which we are circulated.

In other words, if you pick up a copy of the Springfield News-Leader on your way to visit your child at Missouri State University or on your way to Branson, the chances are pretty good that your future perceptions of Springfield, Mo., will be influenced by that newspaper you just bought. My first job in the advertising business was in 1984, and since that time, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that perception is everything. 

One of our contributors told me that she intentionally drops off copies of our magazine in trendy little coffee shops around the St. Louis area. She apparently does so because she is proud of the magazine, and she wants to help stop the perception that our area is on the decline and that we have very little to offer in terms of culture and commerce. As most of our readers realize, Northwest St. Louis County is brimming with great history, tremendous talent, fine businesses, beautiful homes, and very friendly people. Region- wide perceptions about this area, however, could be dramatically improved. 

Combine the devastating decline of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, the destruction of 2,000 homes and nearly 100 businesses in Bridgeton for a seldom used runway, and the effective abandonment of Northwest Plaza in St. Ann, and what do you have? What you have, my friend, is a perception problem. Pile on top of that the nationwide trend in the 1980s and 1990s to migrate out of inner cities and their original suburbs and then what kind of community are you left with? I guess the answer depends on your perspective and your insight. It depends on whether your perceptions are influenced by your peer group, people you aspire to be like, or pure, deductive reasoning. It’s sometimes easier to look down your nose at a person or a geographic area than it is to study the real facts about that individual or place.

The bottom line is that, no matter where people now reside, they are generally very proud of the area, but where they “grew up” is almost always sacred to them. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. On the local Facebook Groups I’ve organized, I’ve read thousands of fond remembrances from area baby boomers about Northwest Plaza, St. Charles Rock Road, Pattonville and Ritenour High Schools, and virtually every neighborhood around here. When I announced online that we were launching the Rock Road Reporter, I was immediately flooded (and still am) by requests for copies of the magazine from former local residents who now live in St. Charles County, Lincoln County, Warren County, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Bradenton, Fla., to name just a few. Did they think that our magazine was going to be the second coming of Time or Newsweek or Rolling Stone? Nope. They just missed the area where they’d grown up and thought that our magazine could bring a little piece of home back to them. 

The area in which they were raised was and still is considered to be “working-class” and “middle-class.” Their parents might have worked at McDonnell-Douglas (Boeing) or at the Ford or GM plant. They may have been in “the trades” as a machinist, pipe fitter, equipment operator, electrician, welder, plumber, carpenter, painter, bricklayer or laborer. Just like today, local people sold clothing and shoes and furniture and waited tables and tended bar and swept and mopped the floors at schools and businesses. They worked hard and took pride in what they accomplished. They put food on the table and sent their freshly scrubbed kids to school every day. America was booming, and it was the working-class and middle-class paychecks that kept it booming. Families would buy that new Ford or Chevy or Dodge every three to five years and the new Zenith color television and new Frigidaire, as well. It made sense that one job here created another job here. 

Things have changed quite a bit since then for the working class. Lifetime jobs with the same company are now extremely rare, as are retirement pensions. Loyalty to workers is a thing of the past, and the dignity and honor of an honest day’s work is often overlooked and underappreciated. Greed is rampant, and the divide between rich and poor is much greater than it has ever been. A good friend and top salesman that I worked with in the early 1990s told me back then: “It used to be that sales and marketing people ran companies, and now it’s the bean counters that run companies.”

His point at the time was, instead of investing in new markets and new products to create more profits, companies were beating down vendors and cutting jobs to prop up the bottom line. Very little has changed from his statement of 18 years ago. In fact, it has gotten far worse. Corporations, with the tacit approval of Congress, have basically declared war on the working people of this country. In the name of the bottom line, unions have been targeted and broken up, pension plans eliminated, insurance premiums increased, and job security abolished. “Increased productivity” typically means that one person is doing the job of two or three people and they’d better not complain about it. Most people know exactly what will happen to them if they do. Even if a worker keeps his or her mouth shut, the possibility of that job being shipped off to a foreign country remains a very real possibility. And speaking of foreign countries, American corporations are allowed to defer taxes from overseas profits to the tune of over $100 billion a year. 

Hundreds of billions of hardworking taxpayers’ dollars have been used to save banks and financial institutions that were “too big to fail.” The very same banks and financial institutions that helped to create the subprime mortgage lending crisis that ultimately wiped out trillions of dollars in middle-class home equity all over this country. Thousands of middle-class people hear a statement similar to the following every day: “We’re sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but your house that was valued at $160,000 in 2007 is now worth $100,000. The $60,000 in equity that you thought you had has now disappeared; therefore, we cannot issue you a line of credit to capitalize your new business because you don’t have enough collateral.” 

When that happens (and I can personally attest to the fact that it does happen), new jobs are not created and small businesses are not allowed to start up or expand. The middle class is rapidly getting squeezed out of the American dream while billionaires are using millions of dollars of our tax money in the form of TIFs (Tax Increment Financing) to “assist” them in the development of big-box stores that sell mostly foreign made merchandise. (For reference, see the new Walmart Supercenter being built on St. Charles Rock Road in Bridgeton. Also remember that the Walmart at Cypress and the Rock Road will be completely abandoned and presumably left for dead.) 

Not to rub it in, but with two wars being fought overseas, we have found the “generosity” to grant the wealthiest among us a $700 billion tax break. Add to that the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and you’ll come up with enough money to send 20 million of our citizens through four years of college. 

Following World War II, the GI Bill proved that educating Americans was a very smart thing to do. The bill helped to create the most innovative and skilled work force in the history of the world. These days, however, it seems that our tax money is better spent on subsidizing the wealthy in the hope that some of that money will “trickle down” to all of us peasants and “create jobs.” Job creation is a concept that politicians love to talk about, but have no idea how to really make it happen. Rebuilding our infrastructure and investing in inner suburban redevelopment doesn’t seem to be a viable option for them. It’s much easier to simply hand over money to corporations. 

How can ordinary working-class or middle-class people (or whatever sociologists like to call us) fight back against raging greed and self-serving politicians? I believe the way our parents did it and the way their parents did it before them was, first, to get off their rear ends and go to the polls and, second, to form and join unions. They teamed up to bargain collectively and to strike with work stoppages against unlivable wages and unnecessary greed. They boycotted companies that mistreated workers and marketed shoddy products. They practiced the time-honored lesson of vigorously protecting their own interest. The same lesson any rich people would teach their sons or daughters. 

By the way, did I mention that there was a bug on page three?

A Tardy Pardon

A Tardy Pardon and Other Buried Treasures

by Kyle Schrader

As he picks up flowers spilled by April showers, Kenneth “Ken” Cox points to a grave etched as being shared by Benjamin, George, and Dennis Lackland and explains, “When there was a flu epidemic, it was not unusual to have two children buried together, or a mother and child.”

Cox, chairman of trustees of the Fee Fee Cemetery Association, is perusing the grounds, located on Old Saint Charles Road in Bridgeton. He notes the poor readability of the Lacklands’ grave marker: “It’s worn limestone. Limestone just doesn’t stand up to the weather.” Lastly, he points out that the monument, like many others there, is an obelisk (think Washington Monument).

A man with appreciation for the details and history of Fee Fee Cemetery, Cox has held his position as chairman for approximately a decade. Before that, he “joined the church in 1986 and got on the board of trustees, gosh, probably 20 years ago, give or take.”

Cox verifies the historical significance, stating, “It is the first and oldest active cemetery west of the Mississippi.” That distinction “used to belong to one down around Ste. Genevieve, but they closed it and the church around 100 years ago.” He continues, “You’ve got old cemeteries out in the woods somewhere, but we don’t know that.”

Besides the Lackland family name, one scanning headstones might also see the locally recognizable Adie, Hickman, Hanley, Averill, and Branneky surnames, just to name a few. Regarding family plots, Cox asserts, “People bought lots back on the 1930s and are just now using the rest of them.”

But perhaps the most interesting resident in the cemetery is Confederate soldier James Morgan Utz, who died in 1864. “He was caught as a spy here in St. Louis,” Cox relates. “He didn’t claim innocence, but somehow somebody got ahold of Lincoln for a pardon. He was hung the day after Christmas in downtown St. Louis, wherever the Union headquarters was, because the pardon was not in time.”

The original Fee Fee Baptist Church, the oldest Baptist church west of the Mississippi, was organized in 1807, and the original church structure was built when land was deeded for a church and cemetery in 1815. That small wooden structure (the exact whereabouts of which remain unknown and the subject of rumor and speculation) was replaced in 1828-1829 by the brick Old Fee Fee Meeting House, which still stands today and is the oldest house of worship in St. Louis County. In 1870, a new church building was erected at Fee Fee and St. Charles Rock Road (then replaced by another church, the current one, built at the same location in 1975), and the Meeting House was converted into a cemetery office and caretaker home. It remains so to this day, with caretakers Pat and Brenda Moutray residing there with son Chris.

Just behind the Meeting House is the “Preachers’ Area,” where only past preachers of the church are buried. And as one drives up to the Meeting House, to the right is “Cremation Garden,” where the ashes of the deceased are laid to rest. There is also a gate still standing in the middle of the yard, a gate to nowhere, as it were, that was put up in 1914. “It’s too narrow now,” Cox clarifies. “A car or truck would tear it up,” as it was made for buggies. He indicates a particularly large slab of a headstone, weighing several tons, and marvels at how it must have been brought in via horse and buggy.

Referring to some of the older burials in the cemetery, Cox attests, “We do have some Revolutionary War burials in here, but they were moved from other unknown cemeteries.” He adds that he has “no idea” about the number of graves, because “there are a lot of unmarked graves.” He can, however, often tell if the ground has been disturbed. “If the ground’s real dry, sometimes I can tell whether it’s been disturbed or not.”

In addition to pointing out the popularity of obelisks on the property, Cox comments that there are a number of headstones with Masonic symbols, indicating the numerous Freemasons. And finally, he shares a story about why Civil War-era Union headstones tend to be flat or curved at the top, while their Confederate counterparts are often pointed like a rooftop: “So no damn Yankee can sit on them,” or so the saying goes.

Occasionally, Pattonville High School brings its history students to the cemetery for field trips. In 1957, Ruth E. Abraham wrote As a Tree Planted, about the history of Fee Fee Cemetery, and as the rebuilding of Fee Free Road afforded more space to be used for future burials, there is undoubtedly more history left to be written.