Cape Girardeau Downtown and Riverfront Archives

October 24, 2011

A Shadow of M.E. Leming Lumber Company

Mother and I took a cruise down to South Cape to see if Sprigg Street is open where the sinkholes closed the road near the Cape LaCroix bridge during the spring flood. (It isn’t.)

A roundish, triangular-shaped structure caught my eye to the east of Giboney Street, right around where the railyards are. I thought it might have been a kiln of some kind, but a quick call to Keith Robinson, who knows everything there is to know about anything that comes close to a railroad track, came up with the answer. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

It’s a sawdust burner

The object was a sawdust burner, left over from the days when M.E. Leming Lumber occupied a good part of that stretch of the river. The river was a good thing and a bad thing for the lumber company. It provided a convenient way to ship trees and finished lumber to and from the mill, but it also meant that it was susceptible to Mississippi River floods.

“The river put us out of business,” Missourian associate edtor Ray Owen quoted Howard C. Tooke, president of the company from 1956 until it closed in 1992. Tooke said in the Feb. 28, 1993, story that “In 1973, we had a major flood. Over the next three years, we had seven floods. It got to the point where we were running only about eight months a year.” Ironically, the company closed before the big flood of 1993 that pretty much marked the end of Smelterville and the Red Star District.

Swamp replaced busy lumber yard

The Missourian story has an excellent photo taken during the company’s heyday in 1939 showing the area covered in stacks of lumber. This aerial, taken from a Cape Air Flight this summer, shows the area today. The light green patch across from the passing barge is where the sawdust burner is located. Most of the wooded area around the green swamp was once the lumber yard.

Directly south of the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge is the Missouri Dry Dock. The orange, cleared land to the west of it is the space that folks were speculating might become a minor league baseball field.

Leming Lumber founded in 1893

The company, founded in 1893, was one of Cape’s largest employers for many years. Today, about all that’s left is this sawdust burner. A peek at Google Earth shows what might be a few foundations scattered around, but I won’t check those out until a trip when it’s been cold enough to kill all the vegetation, cause the ground to get hard and to send the ticks, chiggers and snakes into hiding.

October 20, 2011

Mississippi from Cape Rock

What a difference a few months makes. On April 30, 2011, the Mississippi River gauge at Cape Girardeau read 45.2 and rising. The flood stage in Cape is 32 feet.

When Mother and I drove out to see the new Main Street bridge, we decided to jog over to see Cape Rock. As soon as we went around the curve past the water plant’s goldfish pond, we could see a huge sandbar shining back at us. Barges are going to have to really hug the west channel to make it around the bend at Devil’s Island. (Click on the image to make it larger.)

September 30, 2011

Red House Interpretive Center

The 1934 Central High School Girardot had wood block-style illustrations of Cape Girardeau landmarks in it. This is an artist’s depiction of The Red House, Louis Lorimier’s home. It, and the first St. Vincent’s Church, were destroyed by a tornado.

Red House in 2010

This is a photo of the Red House taken March 22, 2010.

The Red House’s website says, “After much discussion and debate it was decided that a reconstruction or replica of Lorimier’s original Red House was just not possible. No one actually knew for sure what the original trading post looked like. All the group had was a drawing of a house taken from the recollections of a local resident, Sara Bollinger Daughtery. What the board decided to do was construct a house of the French colonial architectural style – a style that would have been used by a French Canadian in this area at that time; and to construct this house following the design of Daughterty’s recollection. Rather than call the house a “replica” or reconstruction it would be an interpretation of the style of house that Lorimier may have built and lived in.”

Main Street and Doors

This single frame was on a roll with the flood photos I ran the other day. I didn’t see anything in the paper, so it must have been a routine medical call that didn’t warrant additional photos. News photographers always shoot first and ask questions later. I used to tell reporters that my machine didn’t come with a backspace or an eraser. If I didn’t capture it right then, it wasn’t possible to redo it or get it over the phone. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

There are some interesting things visible in the photo. The tall, skinny guy on the left under the restaurant sign might be my old debate partner, Pat Sommers. Looks like the person is wearing shades like Pat was prone to do (even in a movie theater). The temperature was a warm 78 degrees. The St. Charles Hotel has been torn down recently enough that Tom Sawyer’s Fence still hides the Sterling store construction.

There is no Downtown Clock in the middle of the Themis – Main Street intersection.

Zickfield’s door

When I was looking for photos that might show the street in modern times, I scrolled through some pictures of Zickfield’s Jewelers, one of only about two businesses left on Main Street from this era. The door caught my eye. Not the door so much, as the lock on the top of the right-hand door. How many thousands of times has a key been turned in that lock to wear away the finish that much?

Unnerstall’s door

That door triggered the memory of another door I had photographed in April of this year – Unnerstall’s Drug Store on Good Hope. I’m sure that the people who PULL on this door today don’t have any idea who or what an Unnerstall was.

Category: Cape Girardeau Downtown and Riverfront