Historical December 1984 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Hiram Leffingwell first proposed the idea in 1870.
He figured a park 1.5 miles west of St. Louis composed of 2,754 acres would contribute to the quality of life for all St. Louisans and increase the value of the land he owned along Kingshighway — then essentially a country road. Barely 100 years before that, Pierre Laclede started the fur trading post of St. Louis on something less than 100 acres. Leffingwell was proposing a space 27 times the size of the original village of St. Louis to be a recreation area!
Well, naturally he ran into opposition. Messers, Forsyth and Skinker, the largest landholders, led the group against Leffingwell.
The Lindell family, also large landholders north of the proposed park, sided with Leffingwell.
For nearly four years, negotiations and compromising proceeded.
Finally, the opposition realized they too would benefit, as the increased land value would be larger than the losses from their land becoming a park.
Most importantly, Leffingwell reduced his planned park to 1,374 acres—less than half the original size but still larger than two square miles.
In 1876 Forest Park was created and the city boundary was moved to 600 feet west of Skinker Road, the western edge of that park.
The first superintendent of Forest Park was M.G. Kern.
He planned a space with three major uses: rambling grounds, driving grounds, and forest grounds.
The eastern edge of the park nearest the city proper was designed for tennis courts, skating areas, picnic grounds, and other intensive uses—thus called the rambling grounds.
The driving grounds were along the northern side of the park and included a hippodrome and a lake with numerous carriage paths. Over half the park, however, was reserved as a forested, semiwilderness area.
The entire western half plus part of the southern central section were to maintain the atmosphere of a timberland.
The native stream of that area of the park, the River Des Peres, was to be kept a forest stream and a place for contemplation and relaxation.
The ten-year period at the turn of the century, 1895 to 1905, saw Forest Park become what it is today in essence and in detail.
By 1890 as many as 3 million people a year were taking the train to the park.
The eastern section, the rambling grounds, were being used to the point of absurdity.
In 1896 the River Des Peres flooded, limiting park use and changing the appearance of the forest glades. Public outcry started the process of encasing the river which eventually resulted in no river in the park at all except underground in concrete tubes.
But it was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 which really altered the entire ambience of Forest Park. Twelve thousand trees were dynamited out of the ground to make space for the various buildings and public areas. Seventeen Indian mounds were destroyed and all their artifacts taken to the Peabody Institute at Harvard University.
By the time the Exposition— commonly referred to as the St. Louis World’s Fair—closed in the fall of 1904, the park had been altered utterly.
Some have called the fair one of the major natural disasters to hit St. Louis in terms of its destructiveness. More earth was moved in the park to build that fair than was moved to build the Suez Canal. Afterwards, debris from the buildings and the fair goers was pushed into the swamp land north of the park along the river.
This shortly became the Washington Heights Subdivision and is now referred to as the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood.
After 1905 and the closing of the Exposition, the institutions of the park were put in place.
The Missouri Historical-Society and the St. Louis Art Museum are direct products of the fair.
The Zoo came along about the same time but was not a product of the fair as such except that the bird cage was built for the fair.
The first airfield for St. Louis was in Forest Park, and Charles Lindbergh piloted air-mail flights from that field to Chicago before his flight over the Atlantic. Several planning groups and city efforts are trying to predict and guide the future of Forest Park.
It is no easy matter.
Although two square miles seems like a lot of space, it really is not.
Many other cities, such as San Diego and Minneapolis, have moved major zoological functions out beyond the urban and even the suburban boundaries with the creation of significant wildlife parks fenced and controlled in their access. Fencing has even been suggested for Forest Park to control access to it, but that idea is clearly abhorrent. Forest Park is not at all what Leffingwell had in mind.
Yet it is clearly a major city and metropolitan jewel.
The jewel may need a new setting now and again, but it needs a great deal of care all the time.
One hundred years from now it will be much the same as the people who use it —changing and changing again.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, December 1984.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Historical account includes claims about destroyed Indigenous mounds, museum collections, Washington Heights development and displaced earth versus Suez Canal; retained as author’s account, not independently confirmed research.
Original source: SD_Times1984_12.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
