The Swimming Pool in the Woods

by Bob Brail

     When a person goes walking in the woods, he observes many aspects of the natural world. He may spot an unusual bird, spy newly blossomed wildflowers in the spring, or hear the peeping of frogs. However, when walking in the Weldon Spring Conservation Area, an alert walker might see things that are not part of the natural world. Because this area was home to about seven hundred people before World War II, it is possible to see stone cisterns, crumbling building foundations, old bottles, . . . and a swimming pool! Yes, in the middle of the woods, a full-size swimming pool hides under vines and branches. This is the unusual story of this swimming pool in the woods.

     In 1927 Archbishop John J. Glennon asked Father Charles Maxwell of St. John's Catholic Church, to lead the Boy Scouts program of the St. Louis Archdiocese. Maxwell consented and began working with the underpriviledged boys of the area. As the months passed, both Glennon and Maxwell became convinced that the Boy Scout program was not meeting the needs of these boys; they felt something more was necessary. So in 1929 Father Maxwell asked John Leahy, a prominent St. Louisan, to help. Leahy then called a meeting of St. Louis civic and business leaders, including Birch O. Mahaffey, a wealthy oil company executive who invested in real estate developments around the United States. The men decided St. Louis needed a boys' club, so they donated several thousand dollars, and the St. Louis Boys' Club opened on October 1, 1929. One of its board directors was Birch O. Mahaffey.

     Barely two months earlier, in the last week of July, 1929, Mahaffey had purchased several parcels totalling over five hundred acres of land adjacent to the Missouri River, including all the bluffs between Weldon Spring and the train station at Lower Hamburg. It was Mahaffey's intent to develop the land as large estates for wealthy St. Louisans. Mahaffey's purchases were completed only months after the general election in November, 1928, when Missourians voted to pass Proposition 3, a measure which provided $75,000,000 to repair roads and bridges and to construct new ones, thus becoming the first state to designate funds for highway projects. Of particular interest to Birch Mahaffey would have been the part of the proposition which specified that the funds would be used “to construct . . . state highways and bridges, and to widen or otherwise improve existing state highways and bridges in the congested traffic areas adjacent to the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City.” Gov. Sam Baker signed the proposition into law on November 28, 1928. It seems very likely that Mahaffey felt the land in southern St. Charles County was much more attractive to prospective buyers with the likelihood of a bridge to the area.

     Although the particulars of the agreement are not known, B. O.Mahaffey agreed to provide a location for a camp for the St. Louis Boys' Club on his newly acquired land. This must have happened at about the time the Club was organized. The next summer the St. Louis Catholic Boys' Camp, directed by Father Charles Maxwell, opened on the banks of the Missouri River at the end of what was known as Howell's Ferry Road. Boys from the city of St. Louis, including some from Cathedral School and St. Luke's School attended, along with employed boys and young men who could attend a special weekend program. The cost of the camp was nine dollars per week. There were nine weeklong sessions, with about fifty boys at each.

     The camp remained open through the summer of 1937. Very early on a swimming pool was constructed because by 1932 it was already being “reconstructed” and repaired. Boys could play tennis, hike, fish, ride, swim, dive, play volleyball and baskeball, complete nature studies, and do the typical activities associated with summer camp. One year the Boy Life Bureau of the Knights of Columbus offered a ten day course at the camp in boy's leadership for priests and laymen. In 1935 several Boy Scouts from St. Charles stayed at the camp before making a thirty-two mile hike to the Boone home.

     Several changes were made to the camp through the years. In 1935 a new swimming pool was built, and enough cabins had been added to house up to one hundred boys at a time. By then the camp was known as “The Father Maxwell's Boys' Camp,” and many St. Charles boys were also attending. One year a five-room lodge was built. Although the camp apparently was never integrated, by 1936 over one hundred African American boys from St. Elizabeth's Church spent a week at the camp.

     Father Maxwell was replaced in 1937 by Father Melvin Keaney. On Memorial Day of that year, five new cabins were dedicated at a daylong celebration open to the public. Participants, who reached the camp by driving over an improved road, swam, danced, and enjoyed a picnic. Future St. Louis Cardinal Hall-of-Famers Joe Medwick and Leo Durocher attended the festivities.

     However, the camp would come to a very abrupt end. In March, 1938, a newspaper article stated that the camp, which had been held at Weldon Spring for the past eight years, “has been forced to find a new location.” Later in 1938 the Catholic Diocese of St. Louis bought a resort near Hillsboro, Missouri, and quickly began construction on Camp Don Bosco.

     What caused the end of the St. Louis Catholic Boys' Camp near Weldon Spring? In the summer of 1937 the Daniel Boone Bridge opened, making it possible for drivers from St. Louis to come directly to southern St. Charles County instead of taking the longer, more circular route northwest to St. Charles and then following the long gravelled Marthasville Road (now Highway 94) southwest to Weldon Spring. This meant that Birch O. Mahaffey could begin thinking about his development plans which apparently did not include a permanent boys' camp. So the camp was closed. Mahaffey then purchased one additional piece of property in the area, bringing the total of his holdings to over six hundred acres. Mahaffey's plans, however, would end in 1940 when the War Department purchased 18,000 acres (what is now the Weldon Spring and August Busch Conservation Areas) to construct and secure a munitions factory, including all the parcels Mahaffey had purchased in 1929. No estates were ever sold or luxury homes ever built. By early 1941, all that remained of the St. Louis Catholic Boys' Camp was the swimming pool and the “High-Ho Lodge.”

The High-Ho Lodge in 1941

     Today, seventy years after it closed, evidence of the St. Louis Catholic Boys' Camp can be found fairly easily. The site of the camp can be reached in one of two ways. The easiest is to drive to the Missouri Research Park just off Highway 94. Follow Research Park Drive to the Duckett Creek Trailhead parking area. Walk towards the Katy Trail. Just before the Katy Trail, a long bridge spans a creek. At the end of the bridge, on the right, there is an eight foot section of wrought iron fence. A path begins here toward the right. Take that path to the right that leads to a knoll about one hundred feet away. A small stream can be stepped across. Climb the knoll and the pool is just ahead. A gps would make this search even easier (UTM/UPS coordinates are 701488 4284601).

     The second approach to the camp is to park at the Howell Trailhead of the Busch Greenway on Highway 94. The broad path that leads to the southeast is the old Howell Ferry Road. Follow this trail for about two miles to the camp site. It is a well-defined trail. When you come to the old security fence, you have reached the western edge of the camp. Again, a gps might prove helpful.

     The swimming pool is about forty by sixty feet, and both of its ladders on the deep end are still in place. Next to the pool is a eight feet by eight feet foundation made of stones and concrete; exposed water pipes can be seen just down the hill. This was probably the camp's pumping facility. North along the previously mentioned old security fence are twelve concrete foundation supports which made up the foundation of a building about twenty-five by twenty feet. East of these concrete supports along the base of the hill, a line of rusty pipes sticks out of the ground. These twenty-four pipes, spaced about five feet apart from each other, were probably the camp showers.

     There is perhaps no better method “to make history come alive” than to find artifacts of a historical event still in place where the event occurred. This is certainly true of the St. Louis Catholic Boys' Camp in the Weldon Spring Conservation Area. As a person walks around that huge pool in the woods, it is almost possible to hear several dozen boys laughing, splashing, and completely enjoying themselves on a summer day long ago.

Sources: 1929 Missouri Session Laws (Missouri State Archives); “History Chronology” (modot.org); Keaney file (Archdiocese of St. Louis Archives); “The Organization and Development of the Boys' Club of St. Louis” (ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1709&context=luc_theses); Reappraisal Report for B. O.Mahaffey (National Archives at Kansas City); Recorder of Deeds Office (St. Charles County, Missouri); Warrenton Banner (newspapers.com); The Western Watchman (Archdiocese of St. Louis Archives); wikipedia.org.