Cape Girardeau History and Photos

August 22, 2015August 22, 2022

Discovery Park of America

The fellow I’m working with on documenting The Bootheel suggested we play hooky and sneak across the river to Union City, Tennessee, to check out the Discovery Park of America. I didn’t expect much, but since he was buying lunch and paying our admission, I agreed.

I mean, after all, Union City, according to the 2010 Census has a population of 10,895. The whole of Obion county has only 31,131 people, less than the population of Cape Girardeau. How big of a deal can this be, anyway?

When you pull into the parking lot, you’re greeted by a futuristic-looking building. It looks big, and it is – it has 100,000 square feet of space, with 60,000 of it devoted to exhibits.

Grounds cover 50 acres

I didn’t even begin to walk the grounds to look at the 100-year-old church, an 1800’s school house, 15 log structures, a gristmill, six train cars, and pretty much an entire vintage community.

There is plenty of color. A handout says the garden contains approximately 24,000 plants, 4000 azaleas, 1000 rose bushes and 750 trees.

20,000-gallon aquarium

A 20,000-gallon aquarium features living creatures from Reelfoot Lake, such as gar, bass, crappie, and turtles.

Welcome to the Discovery Center

This fellow at the entrance to the Discovery Center lobby isn’t your normal Walmart greeter.

83 miles from Cape

Google shows that Union City is 83 miles from Cape, just under two hours of driving time via IL-3 and US-51 S. I was already south of there, so I went in across the Caruthersville bridge and can’t tell you about the roads on the Google route. From what I saw, I think you could probably beat their estimated drive time. It’s well worth it.

There’s a large collection of vintage automobiles and motorcycles, so you might like to contemplate what it would be like to make that drive in one of these shiny cars.

Plenty for kids to do

There are plenty of hands-on displays for the kids. You can let them burn off some energy by going down the two-story slide modeled after the human body. (You have to be three feet tall to go down it.)

A blast of cool air

As I was leaving one exhibit room, a blast of cool air hit me. I turned to find out it was coming from an open doorway leading to a darkened room made up to look like a dungeon. In it were instruments of restraint and torture, including this electric chair with the ironic note, “PLEASE DO NOT SIT.”

When one is in a room that contains a rack, a breaking wheel and a guillotine, one is inclined to obey the signs.

Huge military gallery

This is not just a place to see small objects like arrowheads. The military gallery contains airplanes hanging from the ceiling, a helicopter, several tanks and all kinds of other implements of warfare.

For more information about the Discovery Park of America, go to its website. I’ve been to a lot of museums, including ones in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, St. Louis, Memphis and Birmingham. This place gives them a run for their money.

Photo gallery

Yes, I know this is overkill. To be honest, I’m including a lot of these photos because they give good captioning and display ideas for my museum friends to steal. I don’t know who does the exhibit design planning here, but the results are spectacular. Click on any image to make it larger, then use the arrow keys to move around.

August 21, 2015

Covered Bridge With a View

Cape Girardeau county has its Burfordville Covered Bridge at the Bollinger Mill Historic Site, but Athens county in Ohio has the Palos Covered Bridge, a bridge with a view.

When you turn onto Red Rock, Township Road 347, the bridge over Sunday Creek in the distance looks pretty conventional. The Bridgehunter website, maintained by James Baughn, says the structure was built in 1876, restored in 1974 and, again, some time in this century.

Burfordville is longer

The Burfordville bridge, with a total length of 140.1 feet, is quite a bit longer than the Sunday Creek bridge, which is only 78.1 feet long. The deck widths are about the same, roughly 12 feet wide.

Check out the window

The window cut in the side has a practical purpose: a railroad track crosses diagonally across the road just beyond the bridge. Without the window, you wouldn’t know a train was coming until it was too late.

Bridge is open for traffic

The Cape county bridge is closed to vehicular traffic, but you can still drive across the Palos bridge (also known as the Newton Bridge).

Congrats to Ida Dell

Congrats to Ida Dell, who celebrated her 15th wedding anniversary on July 3 if you can believe the graffiti.

As always, click on the photos to make them larger.

August 20, 2015

Haunted? Moonville Tunnel

I did two posts back in April where I promised I was going to write about the allegedly haunted Moonville railroad tunnel. (The first showed a spectacular orange sunset, and the other was where I tried, very unsuccessfully, to get Curator Jessica to play Padiddle by Urban Dictionary rules.)

Author and playwright Anton Chekhov famously wrote, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” So, to keep from violating Chekhov’s Rule, here’s an account of our visit.

Located in least populated county in Ohio

The Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad was trying to find the most economical route to reach Cincinnati when a landowner named Samuel Coe offered a piece of his land for free if the road would go across his property to haul coal and clay off it. A deal was struck, and coal mines and iron furnaces dotted the area.

Even today, Vinton county is the least populated and most heavily forested county in Ohio. Back then, it was even more desolate. People who lived in Moonville had to walk two long trestles and go through the tunnel to get to the neighboring communities of Hope or Mineral. It was said that by 1920, five or six people had been killed walking the bridges or in the tunnel. The last fatality was in 1986 when a 10-year-old girl was struck by a locomotive on the trestle immediately in front of the tunnel.

Railroad workers said the line was the most desolate eight miles of track between Parkersburg, WV, and St. Louis.

Wanted me to squeal like a little girl

Curator Jessica has a kind of mean streak. I was sure she pumped me up with ghost stories, then lured me out to the tunnel just as the sun was going down so she could sneak up behind me and cause me to squeal like a little girl. To keep that from happening, I made sure to know her whereabouts at all times.

Click on the photos to make them larger. Maybe you can see a spirit I missed.

Two trains met head-on

With that kind of death toll, there are lots of candidates for the mysterious figure who shows up from time to time.

In 1880, according to one website, “On a cold November night in 1880, Engineer Frank Lawhead was taking the dark passage from Cincinnati to Marietta. He would have no more time than to blink at a light bearing down on him before his life was stripped away from him. The dispatcher failed to notify the train there was a second train coming toward them on the tracks. The train he was driving along the Marietta and Cincinnati route through the tiny town of Moonville would take a headlong trip straight into another train coming along the same tracks. He died, most likely, instantly along with the fire man on board the train.”

The February 17, 1895, Chillicothe Gazette reported, “A ghost (after an absence of one year) returned and appeared in front of a freight at the point where Engineer Lawhead lost his life. The ghost is seen in a white robe and carrying a lantern. ‘The eyes glistened like balls of fire and surrounding it was a halo of twinkling stars.'”

Other theories

Another website lists a whole raft of possibilities: “The ghost of the Moonville Tunnel is one of those legends that’s based on historical fact but has been distorted by telling and retelling over the years. The major story is that someone–an engineer, a conductor, a brakeman, a signalman?–was crushed under the wheels of the train that used to go through the place. Apart from that basic fact, things get hazy. Was he drunk? Was he stationed in Moonville or was he a brakeman on the train? Was he an eight-foot-tall black guy named Rastus Dexter? Some sources say he was playing cards with other guys. It’s been said that he was a conductor murdered by a vengeful engineer who asked him to inspect underneath the train and then started it up. One source even said that he was trying to get the train to stop because Moonville was in the grip of a plague and was running low on supplies. His death was the end of Moonville.

This seems a little too romantic, especially since the actual newspaper article from the McArthur Democrat on March 31, 1859 tells a much more mundane story: ‘A brakeman on the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad fell from the cars near Cincinnati Furnace, on last Tuesday March 29, 1859 and was fatally injured, when the wheels passing over and grinding to a shapeless mass the greater part of one of his legs. He was taken on the train to Hamden and Doctors Wolf and Rannells sent for to perform amputation, but the prostration of the vital energies was too great to attempt it. The man is probably dead ere this. The accident resulted from a too free use of liquor.’”

A squeal-free zone

I will sometimes pick up strange vibes from places I go into, but the spirits were quiet that day in the Moonville Tunnel. Much to Miz Jessica’s disappointment, it was a squeal-free zone.

The tunnel is not the easiest thing to find, even with some detailed directions from a helpful waitress where we stopped for a late lunch. Don’t count on getting a cell signal out to help you, either. You are in a place with spotty service, at best. Here’s a site with a map and GPS coordinates.

I’d rather go down to listen to the ghost whistles from Louis Houck’s railroad that Reader Keith Robinson described.

August 19, 2015

That Dammed Sprigg Street Sinkhole

I always take a run down check out the cement plant quarry, but the trip takes a little longer now that Sprigg is closed at Cape LaCroix Creek due to a persistent sinkhole. In the 2011 flood, water under pressure from the river followed cracks and almost filled the quarry.

Sinkhole swallowed water lines

Mother Earth was hungry for Cape’s infrastructure.

The Southeast Missourian had a story by Samantha Rinehart on August 18, 2015, that reported the Cape city council had approved allowing crews to begin the design and construction phase of building a bridge that will span the sinkhole area. The cost had lots of commas and zeroes.

Upstream dam

When I went there on July 19, I was surprised to see a dam upstream of the bridge to keep Cape LaCroix Creek from flowing into the sinkhole area. A fairly strong thunderstorm had moved through over the past couple of days, so I wondered where all that water had gone.

Dam to keep Mississippi out

There was a corresponding dam on the other side to keep the flooding Mississippi out. I didn’t have any desire to have my shoes sucked off wading through gumbo, so I elected to wait for a dryer day to explore.

Lohmann Fixture Company

By August 17, it was dry enough to check out the Mississippi River dam. The white building sticking up in the background is the old Lohmann Fixture Company.

1929 railroad bridge

The river was back to its normal levels, so nothing was lapping up against it. The black pipe off to the right must have been how the water from upstream got past the sinkhole area. I have a hard time believing a 10 or 12-inch pipe could handle the volume of water dumped by the last rainstorm, but it must have. The railroad bridge in the photo was built in 1929.

No KKK and swastika in 2010

When I shot the 1929 railroad bridge in 2010, it didn’t sport the KKK and swastika that it does here.