Don Robinson State Park: First Look

Click on the above photo to see the full horizontal view

Don Robinson, childless bachelor, made a fortune with spot remover and ended up owning 818 acres in northern Jefferson County, MO that before his death in 2012 he gave to the State of Missouri for a new state park that opened at last on January 6, 2017. One of its two hiking loops is 2.4 miles, partly paved, and the other more than 4 miles; the latter isn't open yet. His unusual, hand-built hilltop house (part stone cottage that was already there, part particle board, old boards, old glass, or anything he could recycle) is preserved for a future Don Robinson museum.

Raw-looking orange and red sandstone cuts are the first thing you'll see as you enter from the Byrnesville Road. A steep short asphalt loop leads to Robinson's house, with an Ozark foothills view as far as you can see. A huge concrete terrace was poured to its south and furnished with a shelter, picnic tables, and rocking chairs. It'll be a spectacular view in every season. Some old stone stairs have been preserved, along with the old bench in the photo, the only ornate thing there. Robinson's grave (he was born in 1927) is not far from the house and on a new bench nearby you can sit and say a long thanks that his land did not become a subdivision.

Originally it was said there'd be a campground but there isn't. The property abuts some of the LaBarque Creek-area conservation sites and natural areas. Special features include lots of chinkapin oaks and birds, and hardly any cedars (unlike the formerly cedar-choked Glassberg Conservation Area). Eight hundred eighteen more acres for the people of Missouri and guests. Most of the land is accessible only on foot. I was there late in the day and caught a few rays of sunshine, scarce these last two weeks in January. The land will be fun to explore.

Great News About LaBarque Creek

I would lay down my life for this LaBarque Creek that has given me and all my human and animal friends so much sustenance and new kinds of happiness. A group of area property owners called the Friends of LaBarque Creek Watershed has fought development and other incursions with hard work and fundraising and just plain love. Some facts or information about the watershed: The creek is 6.4 miles long and the watershed is 13 square miles. 86 percent of the watershed is forested. The creek supports 40 species of fish. Rare plants, insects and lichens abound in it and on its banks. I have shown you some  of them in the 470 blog entries I have made about life and nature in this area.

So I was ecstatic hearing that two large tracts of land in the LaBarque Creek watershed have been purchased by the state of Missouri and now belong to all of us forever, the larger tract eventually to become Don Robinson State Park, Missouri's 51st state park. Across the road from me is a 330-acre parcel that borders on the Meramec River and for ten years I have wished to explore it. (I watched the wooden fencing around it fall apart, uncared for.) But that land was private. Soon it will belong to us all. The other substantial tract of 843 acres, the size of Central Park, not a half-mile from the 100-acre Divine property, was willed to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in 2008 by Mr. Don Robinson.