June 2011

June 3, 2011September 18, 2011

Stone Wall on Park Drive

I’d like to know the history behind this stone wall running along the south side of Park Drive between Spanish and Fountain. It looks like it’s been there quite a few years.

This stretch of road was the scene of a traffic fatality Aug. 29, 1959, which broke a fatality-free record of almost two years. A car went out of control on the curve and overturned at 11:30 p.m. in the 300 block of Park Drive. A 14-year-old boy died of injuries sustained in the wreck.

You can read more about the crash here.

The Missourian story points out that Park Drive is also known as North Street. It said the scene of the accident was in the block between Fountain and Spanish “where the old city dump was located, almost directly across from the cliff on the top of which stands the home of O.G. Walker.” I’m assuming the dump was located where Missouri Park is today, just below Old Lorimier Cemetery.

Old retaining wall

If you look south from the stone wall, there is a steep hill with a concrete retaining wall about a third of the way up it.

N. Lorimier – W. Lorimier – Rivermont

From the top of the hill, there is a curious street layout. You get there by going north on North Lorimier until it deadends at the T-intersection of West Lorimier and Rivermont Drive. It’s not often the you run into an intersecting north and west street with the same name.

If you look over the hill on the Rivermont side of the intersection, you can see the crumbling remains of an old foundation. I don’t know if it was the O.G. Walker home mentioned in the news story or not.

Spectacular view – of old dump

What must have been a basement is becoming a catch-all for trash, brush and some small saplings. In its day, it must have had a fairly spectacular view – of the city dump.

It’s odd that there would be a city dump right below the Old Lorimier Cemetery. I wonder if it came before or after the dump that was located in Happy Hollow, south of Good Hope.

Does anyone know the history of the stone wall or anything about this building on Rivermont Drive?

June 2, 2011September 18, 2011

Capaha Rose Display Garden

Whenever I think of the Capaha Rose Display Garden across from Cherry Hill, I think of Gladys Stiver, so I asked her granddaughter, Shari, to fill me in on the place.

Here’s what she sent me:

What most folks call the Capaha Rose Garden was the 1953 brainchild of best friends and demon gardeners Arla Harris and Gladys Stiver.

By 1955, they’d founded what was officially called the Rose Display Garden at the northwest corner of Capaha Park, and by sometime in the 1960’s had managed to get the garden certified as a Rose Test Garden by the AARS, the All-America Rose Selections, a national society which tests all new roses and selects annual winners in a variety of categories. In the garden world, this is a really big deal.

AARS Test Garden

There are only 10 gardens nationwide now certified by the AARS as test gardens, and in the 1970’s there were only about 135. Very fitting for The City of Roses and a huge achievement back then for the local garden clubs.

The Garden has always been maintained by the volunteers from the various garden clubs making up what was then the Cape Girardeau Council of Garden Clubs, with each club assuming responsibility for a number of the up to 42 beds in the garden.

Slave labor, however, has also always been welcome, and I spent most Saturday mornings of my childhood weeding beds and deadheading spent blooms under the critical eye of my grandmother, Gladys “Ike” Stiver, who rewarded these efforts with a banana split at Sunny Hill Restaurant. In the 1950’s, when I worked there, competition among garden clubs to maintain the plants and beds was fierce.

June 1, 2011September 18, 2011

Fruitland Strack Quarry Gets OK

The Missourian had a story Wednesday saying that the Missouri Division of Natural Resources Clean Water Commission has granted Strack Excavating an operating permit at the site of its quarry development off U.S. 61 near Fruitland. Here’s a link to the DNR site with all of the information, including a legend identifying the property owners on the exhibit above. No. 7 is the northern boundary of Saxon Lutheran High School.

You can click on any photo to make it larger.

Aerial of general quarry area

When Ernie Chiles and I went flying on April 17, 2011, I asked him to make a pass over the Saxon Lutheran High School in Fruitland. I didn’t know at the time exactly where the proposed quarry was going to be, but I figured we’d be close.

This view above is generally to the north. The high school is the inverted Y-shaped building with the blue roof at the left center. You can orient yourself by looking for the road that curves to the right near the top of the photo and the creek / treeline that cuts across diagonally at the center.

View to the southwest

The school is on the left; the light-colored road running left to right at the top is I-55, the darker road running under I-55 is U.S. 61. The road that makes a right-angle bend is County Road 601.

What’s east of the school?

When we made a closer pass, my eye was drawn to something diagonally across from the school’s athletic fields. Whatever it was was spread over a significant expanse of land.

Looks like some kind of recycling operation

It looks like what we would have called a junk yard in the old days. It appears that it’s somewhere that takes big pieces and makes them into piles of little pieces. Note the corner of the high school’s playing field in the upper left.

Still can’t identify it

We came in a little tighter, but I still couldn’t tell exactly what was going on there. I wasn’t sufficiently curious enough to drive up there to find out. I’m sure someone will fill me in.

Without getting in the middle of what is purely a local issue, it does seem a little disingenuous to get worked up about the quarry when there appears to be another industrial operation with its attendant traffic within stone’s throw of a playing field.

Strack Hwy 74 Quarry

Here’s a link to photos I took of the Strack Quarry on Hwy 74 last fall.