Lonely Jensen's Point

The day didn't know itself what it wanted: cloudy, uncertain, and so was I, trying to find Jensen's Point in Pacific, until I read that this reclaimed historic site's little park is next to the Red Cedar Inn, the red-and-white Route 66 old restaurant nobody can miss. Unfortunately the Red Cedar Inn isn't operating; everyone who sees it wishes it were.

I had Jensen's Point to myself. On private land for 25 years, and falling to pieces, Jensen's Point was finally bought and restored by the City of Pacific, absolutely ruining it as a teenage  drinking and make-out lair and shelter for vagrants.  It re-opened in 2016. Many stone steps lead up the bluff to this stone structure at the top, built in 1939 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, honoring Lars Peter Jensen, the first manager of Shaw's Arboretum in Gray Summit. He held the job for 18 years. The Missouri Botanical Gardens' Gardenway Association hoped people would take Route 66 from St. Louis to Gray Summit and see the Arboretum, now called Shaw Nature Reserve.

It's a useless structure except for its quaintness and view of distant hills toward the west, and toward the south, the trains that made Pacific what it is, between the mighty and temperamental Meramec River on one side and old Route 66 on the other.