DNR
Home PageROCK BRIDGE MEMORIAL STATE PARK NEEDS HELP
FROM PUBLIC TO CAPTURE HISTORY
JEFFERSON CITY, MO., JAN. 28, 2008 -- Rock Bridge Memorial State Park near Columbia is not just a pretty place to visit -- it is also rich in history. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources needs the help of current and former visitors to help document this history through photographs, oral history and artifacts.
To capture history before it disappears, park staff would like to talk to anyone who has old photographs, memories or artifacts related to the park that date to any time before or near the park's founding in 1967. Photographs and artifacts would be photographed, and memories would be preserved in taped interviews. This will allow owners to retain the photographs and artifacts and still participate in the preservation project. Owners will have the option of donating the original photographs and artifacts to the park.
While the Rock Bridge area was privately owned until 1967, many people had plenty of reasons to visit and photograph the area and activities held there. In the early 1900s, many people stopped in at the Dennis Ingrum farm and visited the Rock Bridge, explored Connor's Cave and saw the remains of the whiskey distillery, which included a tall chimney and copper stills. In the 1920s, Jesse Calkins operated an amusement park that included a steam-powered carousel. Reportedly, people gathered for summer picnics in the cool air of the Rock Bridge while politicians and others spoke or performed on the stagelike surface of a bluff near the Rock Bridge. Dances were held in the Rock Bridge valley and at the southern-style mansion that overlooked the valley. Old photographs may have captured the ruins of buildings or equipment and be able to reveal information about the general store, tanyard, blacksmith shop and other industries of the Rockbridge Mills of the 1800s.
Park staff would also like to learn more about the following: fund-raising to create a memorial park; early caving and mapping expeditions of the Devil's Icebox Cave; Lakeview School; a school listed on old maps as "African School;" and the lives of notable people associated with park lands such as Nathan Glasgow, David S. Lamme, Robert S. Barr, John Keiser, James McConathy James and David Emmitt, John and J.P. Heibel, and the families of Again, Barnes, Barry, Bradford, Cunningham, Fortney, Ginn, Hickam, Hall, Hopper, Judd, Lowry, Miller, Reyburn, Saunders and Turner.
To participate in this historic preservation project, call Rock Bridge Memorial State Park at 573-449-7400. More information may also be obtained by calling the Department of Natural Resources toll free at 800-334-6946 (voice) or 800-379-2419 (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf). For information on state parks and historic sites, visit the Web at www.mostateparks.com.
