2024 EB Day 15 - Changing Times

In his day Jesse James and his band supposedly hid out at Meramec Caverns deep under the landscape in Stanton.

Our group toured in to check out the dry colorful labyrinth of caves.

Nearby, the Gardenway Motel sign is all that’s left of what must have been a massive motel complex judging by the sign size, and the car park in its place.

In Eureka is a state park, dedicated so in 1997 after the country’s most extensive cleanup of dioxin, inadvertently spread on the dirt roads to keep the dust down.

A subsequent flood of the river did nothing to help the problem.

It was a monumental disaster that blighted the nation, and landscape.

Residents were relocated and all homes were destroyed as the USA’s biggest decontamination effort was put in place to clean things up.

The old bridge over the Meramec River that separates the visitors’ center and the affected area is just steel girders these days, but is on an original R66 alignment. There is talk of it being made suitable for foot traffic in the future.

It’s a short hop into St Louis on the freeway…

…to Blueberry Hill, where Chuck Berry performed over 200 times.

Businessman Joe Edwards was responsible for many performers at Blueberry Hill… and many other buildings on the Delmar Strip, which he helped turn into one of the top ten streets in America.

A multitude of photos of Joe with every star and performer you can think of, adorns the walls!

The Moonrise Hotel is another of Joe’s initiatives…

We’ll stay there for the night, but not before a visit to The Arch.

It’s a magnificent engineering feat,

…completed back in the 1969s without any loss of life, despite an era with much less focus on safety. From up high her shadow over the Mississippi River is imposing.

Back at our hotel we relaxed after another day on the road, under the ‘moon’, outside, on the roof top bar.