Sandy Creek Covered Bridge: Peace

All seemed so crisp and fresh this first day of 2014 that I treated myself to the historic 1872 covered bridge in my own home county, one of the four remaining covered bridges in Missouri. A former toll bridge partly destroyed by heavy weather, it was rebuilt in 1886 with most of its original materials. The Sandy Creek Covered Bridge, on Old Lemay Ferry Road, was closed to traffic and made a state historic site in 1967 and, following the original builder's plans, restored in 1984. It's 18 feet 10 inches wide. The site includes picnic areas, a trail of maybe half a mile, and a small "beach" on the little murmuring creek. In the early days, anyone could build a bridge and charge any toll they felt like until government stepped in. I walked across twice so I'd have paid 6 cents according to this chart. Merchants also posted ads on the inside walls.

Happy Divine New Year! Treat yourself to a historic site sooner than I did. Twelve years in the county and this was my first visit to the covered bridge.

The Old French Trading Post

Toured the private historic site Fort LaCharrette with its proprietor, architectural historian Wheelock Crosby Brown, who showed me around the oldest horizontal-log cabin west of the Mississippi and the fur-trading post founded in 1762 by Frenchman Joseph Chadron and his Osage Indian wife. Lewis and Clark visited Fort LaCharrette, the last white settlement on their way west, in 1804. Brown, a specialist in historic restorations, saved the buildings from ruin and lovingly restored or rebuilt every inch with original materials or as close as he could get. The cabin, trading post and authentic outbuildings perch on a bluff high above the Missouri River near Washington, Mo., and Brown (the bearded guy; degree from Stanford) flies there the old French flag and the 17-star American flag of Lewis and Clark's time. He gives tours, by appointment, to groups or to individuals such as myself. I got to sit in an 18th-century chair hollowed out of a log and upholstered with a blanket, and listen as Brown described the Chadrons' business and home lives. The fireplaces work.

Brown explained that Fort LaCharrette wasn't a military fort. Back then, anyplace people could run for safety and shelter was called a fort. A "charrette" is a wooden wagon (pictured) of the kind that Joseph Chadron filled with furs he bought or bartered from white and Indian trappers, and took down the bluff to a boat and to St. Louis to resell.

Things to remember: "Osage" is from the French "Aux sage," meaning "wise ones." "Missouri" is from the Siouxan, "Ouimisourite," meaning "men of long canoes." Here's another article about Fort LaCharrette.

Dillard's Mill, Davisville, Mo.

Pulling a lever, the guide started the turbine and the whole three stories of the 1901 mill shivered, and the old machines made of wood and cast iron, with belts of canvas or leather, came alive. I remarked on the quaking and the guide said, "You're in a giant machine." In its day Dillard's Mill, powered by the Huzzah River, separated corn from cob and flour from bran, grinding the grain into flour and the cobs and bran into animal feed, wasting nothing. It ground coffee and spices too. Dillard's Mill ground its last in 1956. Here's the mill outside (with its mill pond), a view of the inside, and its trademark flour sack.

I was the only person touring this Missouri state historic site on a weekday. It's about 2 hours' drive from St. Louis. Dillard's original mill, from the 1850s, burned and its ruins were purchased and rebuilt by German immigrants Emil Mischke and his sister Marie. According to the guide, Marie ran the mill while Emil sat outside, smoked, read the paper and gossiped. He fled the area after making pro-German remarks right before WWI, when two other local men who'd aired similar remarks turned up murdered. The Klemmes bought the mill from the Mischkes, built an electrical generator, and when it didn't turn a profit -- most folks began buying their flour from General Mills and Pillsbury -- made the location into a resort. The mill can operate but only for demonstrations.


It didn't use a millstone. After 1875 those were obsolete. This was a higher-tech "roller" mill, running the  grain several times through rollers on all three stories of the mill, then finally through horsehair brushes to extract every speck of usable flour and corn. Before electrification in the 1940s, the turbine ran on water channeled through a millrace, a gate that's lifted to let flowing water generate power. That's how it's run when you visit. The millers kept bamboo fishing rods available so farmers could fish while their grain was ground to order and bagged. More info and driving directions here.