Cape Girardeau History and Photos

April 2, 2010June 23, 2015

The Spring on Bloomfield Road

When we were driving past the castle called Elmwood, my mother wondered if a spring she remembered as a little girl was still there.

I had heard her talk about it years and years ago, so I thought I knew approximately where it was alongside Bloomfield Rd. I parked my van at Kensington Lane and walked north, back toward the curve in the road leading to Cape.

This view, by the way, is the reason Bloomfield Rd. SHOULDN’T be widened. There should be some roads left that let us appreciate what the area was like before it became paved over. If the road isn’t fast enough for you, then don’t move out there. Ditto Route W. OK, rant off.

Just south of the big tree that’s shown in the photo above and on the west side of the road, I saw a small rivulet of water running toward what used to be the Elmwood estate.

Water boils mark the spring

I didn’t see a pipe running under the road that would account for the stream. When I looked at the pool through a polarizing filter on my camera, I could see beneath the reflections on the water’s surface.

Those black circles mark where water is boiling up out of the bottom of the pool.

I had found my Mother’s spring

“My Grandmother – my Mother’s Mother – Mary Adkins, would always buy some kind of pan at the dime store every time we came to Cape from Advance. On the way back, we’d stop at that spring and dip out a drink in the new pan. She died in 1938, when she was 75 years old, so that was quite a few years ago,” my mother, Mary Welch Steinhoff, recalled.

“I don’t remember what kind of car we had – it was before Model T days. Mother (Elsie Welch) would usually come along; Grandmother would drive. Dad (Roy Welch) never liked to drive.”

Did you stop for a drink on the way TO Cape?

“No, we didn’t have a pan on the way TO Cape.”

“Didn’t you ever think about bringing one along?” I asked?

“No, I guess she wanted a new pan and this was always an excuse to get one.”

View of spring looking south

That white fence marks what used to be the Elmwood property. I don’t know if this is in the 900 acres that were sold for the Dalhousie Golf Club or if it’s part of the 70 acres retained by the estate.

Map showing spring and Elmwood

View Bloomfield Spring & Elmwood in a larger map

April 1, 2010March 1, 2012

Cape’s Not a Town; It’s the Twilight Zone

My friend, Jan Norris, the former food editor of The Palm Beach Post and a fellow blogger, asked me to look up a local artist, Brad Elfrink, who produces beautiful hand-crafted buttons and jewelry. Jan’s a button collector, who writes for other collectors.

Brad’s a a relatively young guy originally from Marble Hill who has developed a love for Cape Girardeau’s buildings and people. I was describing a couple of landmarks I had been searching for over the weekend. “Want to see some pieces of them?” he asked, showing me some remnants he had saved from the bulldozer.

I’ll be writing about Brad and his finds later.

When I got back into the car, I called Jan and said, “Most places have six degrees of separation. Cape reduces it to two.”

It was still early, so I decided to shoot some other buildings I remembered in and around the 1600 block of Independence.

Old Fire Station Number Two

We used to go there on grade school field trips. It looks like it might have had two bays in the old days.

Pak-a-Snak, an early convenience store

Just east of the fire station, on the same side of the street, was the Pak-a-Snak. A Missourian story Aug. 17, 1955, called it the first drive-in, cash and carry market of its kind in Cape. We’d call it a convenience store today.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Farrow were the first owners. They sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Porter Stubbs in 1955. The store hours – shocking – were 8 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. every day including – double shocking – Sundays and holidays.

A trip to the Twilight Zone

I wanted a photo of the old Donut Drive-in, but I wasn’t exactly sure which shop it was in. I heard music coming from a small bar a couple of doors down, so I figured somebody there might be able to help me out.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time in bars. I HAVE had occasion to step into one from time to time when I’m riding my bicycle. It doesn’t matter if it’s a redneck bar, a biker bar or just a coffee shop full of regulars, as soon as you step through the door wearing bike shorts and a glow-in-the-dark jersey, conversation stops and all eyes focus on you.

How to survive wearing Lycra

At that point, I’ve found your odds of survival go up if you glance around the room, pause a couple of beats and then say in a loud voice, “Y’all sure do dress funny around here.” Before long, people are asking how far you’ve come, how far are you going, what have you seen along the way, and are offering to buy you drinks or a meal.

There was a man holding a beer in the doorway. “Come on in. There’s plenty of room,” he said with a smile.

“You’ve got enough gray hair that you can probably help me,” I said, handing him a business card.

“Are you Kenny Steinhoff?”

I’ve been running from that nickname since 1967, but I had to admit that – in Cape – I was “Kenny Steinhoff.”

“I’m Jerry Schweain,” he said, extending his hand and smiling wider.

Turns out he was a truck-driving friend and former neighbor of my brother-in-law, John Perry. He posed with a friendly woman from behind the bar, then said, “I’ve got something to show you that you probably never thought you’d see again.”

He reached for his wallet, fumbled around for a bit, then pulled out a worn and faded Palm Beach Post-Times business card with my home phone number scrawled on it. “You told me to give you a call if I ever got down to your neck of the woods. I never got closer than around Tampa, so I never called you.”

I gave him that card in 1977 or 1978.

Only in Cape Girardeau would someone hold onto your business card for 30-plus years and then run into you in a neighborhood bar 1,100 miles from where you live.

Donut Drive-in

With Jerry’s help, I was able to locate the Donut Drive-in. The building still had the serving windows. It was a big deal to pull up to the window on Sunday morning on the way home from church to pick up some fresh donuts or Long Johns, jelly-filled donut pastries so sweet they’d find a cavity faster than a dentist.

Earl Kirchoff opened the doughnut stand in 1952. The ad in the 1964 Girardot had the slogan “Tote a Poke Home.”

March 31, 2010February 8, 2024

Elmwood Dates to Spain and 1797

I knew there was supposed to be a large house located down the gated lane off Bloomfield Rd. past Mt. Tabor as you were heading toward Dutchtown. The property used to be set off with white fences.

When my mother and I were on our way down to see how far the Diversion Channel had backed up, she remarked, “I haven’t been down there in years.”

I confessed that the only time I had been down the road was when I was riding with a deputy sheriff one night. We were cruising around more or less aimlessly when he said, “We’ve been having reports of trespassers down there, let’s take a drive by.”

Right after we cleared the gate, he pointed his spotlight across the grass and said, “Hey! I think that’s a fox. Let’s see if we can catch him,” and went in full pursuit of the animal. Before he had time to get anywhere close, the dispatcher broadcast that the resident of the property thought the trespassers might have come back and asked if any unit was close.

My friend acknowledged the call and said, “XYZ is in the vicinity. We’ll handle.” The dispatcher never knew just HOW much in the vicinity he was.

There weren’t any posted signs

Mother tends to be a little nervous about my sightseeing. “What will you say if anyone stops you?”

I didn’t see a problem

The gate was open.
The property wasn’t posted.
The road is marked on my GPS with a street name.
I have Florida tags on the car and a bumper stick that says, “When I retire, I’m going to go up north and drive real slow.” (OK, the bumper sticker part is a joke. I’m still looking for one.)
We weren’t chasing any foxes.

Elmwood is impressive

After going down a lane so long that we thought we were on a water haul (fire department term for a false alarm because all you did was haul water), Elmwood came into view.

“Wow,” was all I could say. There are bigger homes in Cape County, but none that look like this one.

The Southeast Missourian published a Bicentennial feature on Elmwood’s history Nov. 1, 1975. It’s worth following the link.

The families of Alexander Giboney and Andrew Ramsay settled in this area when Kentucky became “overcrowded,” the feature explained. Giboney and his wife, Rebecca Ramsey settled on the land now known as Elmwood. The King of Spain granted them title to the land in 1797.

Some time around 1808, plans were drawn up for a permanent home, which was built by slaves. Some were stone masons, some skilled carpenters and wood workers, others were brick makers. The house was modeled after the Ramsay family castle in Scotland, Dalhousie.

900 acres become Dalhousie Golf Club

Ray Owen wrote in November 2005 that about 900 acres of the original land grant had been sold to create the Dalhousie Golf Club. At that time, Pat Evans, a son of Robert Evans and descendant of Rebecca Ramsey, still lived in the mansion and maintained about 70 acres of the property.

Interesting historical Elmwood links

I stumbled across several news stories with historical factoids about people connected with Elmwood.

June 8, 1942: Mrs. Patrick Frissell announced the marriage of her daughter, Mary Giboney Frissell to Capt. Robert Evans.

Aug. 2, 1954: Rebecca Ramsay Houck Frissell died at the family home. Good obit with lots of history. Even though she opposed the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, she became active politically after it passed.

June 26, 1963: William G. Evans, 17, took off at the same field where his mother, Mrs. Robert C. Evans, flew her solo exactly 24 years before, June 22, 1939. She was the first woman in Southeast Missouri to fly by herself. The flight took place at the old Consolidated School of Aviation field, which later became the headquarters for R.B. Potashnick Construction Co.

March 30, 2010March 30, 2010

Moon Over Cape Girardeau

I work out of a Domke shooting vest instead of a camera bag. I find it puts everything where I can find it by feel, distributes weight better than a bag, is easier to maneuver in tight spaces and is less likely to get stolen than a bag you set down “just for a minute.” A digital camera with a zoom lens has cut back on the amount of gear I hump around. I used to carry at least three camera bodies and five lenses, plus about 20 rolls of various types of film, not including all the small accessories.

My vest holds my Canon FS-100 video camera; a strobe; a polarizing filter (or UV filter, depending on what I’m using that day); some business cards; a digital tape recorder and lapel mike; spare batteries; a can of pepper spray; a lens cleaning cloth; a small LED flashlight and a few other odds and ends depending on the kind of shooting I plan to do.

On the way out to dinner with Mother Monday night, I grabbed my Nikon D-40 DSLR camera, but forgot to pick up the vest. I shrugged it off. I wasn’t really planning on shooting video anyway and the camera has a small flash built in.

WOW! Look at that moon!

When we came out of Ruby Tuesday and turned east on William, the first thing we saw was a monster moon.

I’ve got a thing for shooting moon pictures. I even lead bicycle Full Moon Rides on the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail where the moonlight is so bright that we don’t even need headlights to see our way (no motor vehicles allowed and there’s nobody there but us, the gators and the mosquitoes).

Something strange always happen. Sometimes a rider does the Frog Dance; on another trip, I thought I’d have to perform a buttectomy.

Even Wife Lila is moonstruck. She tries to make it to the beach for the Lake Worth Full Moon Drum Circle every month. Even when it rains, it’s good.

Oh, no, I don’t have the video camera

When I pulled off the road to shoot the moon photo above, I realized that I didn’t have my video camera. The FS-100 has a longer effective zoom lens than my still camera. It was going to take that extra magnification to bring the moon in closer to my surroundings.

I banged off a few frames with some restaurant signs in the foreground, then made a mad dash for some downtown landmarks.

You can’t outrun Motorola or the moon

Cops used to have a saying, “You can’t outrun Motorola,” their two-way radios. I learned in high school that you can’t outrun the moon, either.

One night I spotted a moon like this one just cracking the horizon. I KNEW if I got to Cape Rock there would be a great photo. Good thing there weren’t any cops on the road that night. I bent every speed law between here and there, but still got to Cape Rock too late to catch the shot I really wanted.

I knew the same thing was going to happen to me again, but I had to give it a try.

Moon rising over Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge

I KNOW I promised a moratorium on photos of the bridge, but this was the only landmark I could find that I could get in the foreground with the moon before it got so high it became a tiny dot. As it is, it looks like something made by an undernourished paper punch.

Sorry.