photographs by Mark Scott Abeln, Steve Tiemann, and Matt Dinerstein
The stats alone are staggering: Our green spaces have 15,000-plus acres (more than 12,000 in the county and 3,250 in the city), 180 parks (around 100 in the city and about 70 in the county), and nearly 200 years of history. Navigate the region’s parks, and you find an abundance of interesting sights, from Lone Elk Park’s bison to Ebsworth Park’s Frank Lloyd Wright house to Forest Park’s wrought-iron bridge. But just how well do you know these beloved spaces?
1) The ruins next to its oft-photographed pond were salvaged from the burned Lindell Hotel in 1867.
2) This site was at one time City Cemetery, until the graves were moved to Arsenal Island in 1856.
3) Years after a tornado destroyed much of this park in 1896, there was a proposal to build an “air landing field” on the site.
4) In the 1950s, 250 full-time employees maintained this park. By the ’70s, only 25 part-time employees did so.
5) This site once housed a makeshift hospital during the Civil War, as well as an orphanage. It later served as a movie set.
6) Once the site of the area’s annual fair, it still bears the discernable outline of a former racetrack. The grounds later included an amusement park.
7) Circus Flora gave its first St. Louis performance at the opening of one of this park’s popular attractions.
8) A dentist once tried transforming this land into a vineyard, planting 25 acres of vines and using a cavern as a cold storage room.
9) Meriwether Lewis and William Clark camped here in 1806, on the final night of their famous expedition across the Louisiana Territory.
Answers: 1) Tower Grove Park, 2) Benton Park, 3) Lafayette Park, 4) Forest Park, 5) Marquette Park, 6) Creve Coeur Park, 7) Faust Park, 8) Cliff Cave Park, 9) Fort Belle Fontaine Park
