Klondike
by Bob Brail
According to the St. Charles County Parks website, Klondike Park is “a scenic property that includes more than four miles of natural surface and paved trails, a lake for fishing, kayaking and paddleboarding, a unique birding and wildlife area, shelters, playgrounds, and sites for cabin and tent camping.” Twenty-five years ago, none of this statement was true. Klondike was an abandoned sand quarry which for several years had thrived and benefitted the local economy. Even now evidence of the quarry lingers, especially in the bluffs that loom over the Missouri and the salt silos still standing by the Katy Trail. The story of Klondike is essentially a story of the Tavern Rock Sand Company.
The story of Klondike really begins across the Missouri River in Franklin County in 1891 when the St. Louis Glass Sand Company, soon to be known as the Tavern Rock Sand Company, began quarry operations on land the company had purchased from local resident Charles Becker. This property was located a short distance east of Klondike's eventual location but, of course, on the other side of the river. The presence of the Missouri Pacific Railroad there meant the quarry would be able to ship the sand by rail. At about the same time Becker Station became a stop on the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Initially the sand quarry employed twelve men. In 1892 Andrew J. Cummings of St. Louis moved to Franklin County to run the sand company. By the next year Becker would have its own post office, and A. J. Cummings would become the postmaster the following year. The quarry became known as Becker Quarry and the community which grew up around the quarry as Becker.
This 1905 map shows the properties of William Engelage, H. H. Haferkamp, and Louis Sanders, all of whom leased/sold land to the Tavern Rock Sand Company. The Becker Quarry operated only a few years. In July of 1897, the company announced that their plant and machinery would be moved to a “point near Augusta, St. Charles County, nearly directly across the Missouri River” from Becker. Upon looking at the land records in the St. Charles County Recorder of Deeds office, it becomes clear that this move had been planned for several years. Although there was no railroad on the north side of the Missouri River across from Becker when the Becker Quarry was started in 1891, a railroad bed there had been graded from Hamburg, at that time the end of the rail line, all the way to Warren County. In fact, William Engelage and H. F. Meyer, two individuals who would later lease land to the Tavern Rock Sand Company for its Klondike Quarry, had sold land to the Cleveland, St. Louis, and Kansas City Railroad Company in 1889 (the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad would take over this company within two years). In July of 1892 the MKT Railroad would lay track to Augusta, making the future Klondike Quarry site accessible by rail. Three months before that event, officials of the Tavern Rock Sand Company had signed twenty-year leases with three men who owned property in the area of the future quarry: H. F. Meyer, William Engelage, and Herman Berg. The lease documents clearly state that the land would be used as a quarry. Each man was to be paid a nominal annual sum until work at the quarry started. Other leases would follow. H. H. Haferkamp signed a forty-year lease with the quarry company in July of 1895; Louis Sanders signed a ten-year lease in July of 1897. Haferkamp would revoke his lease agreement in March, 1897, because the quarry company had not paid him its monthly lease obligation for six months. Possibly the Tavern Rock Sand Company by that time knew that it no longer needed Haferkamp's land. The quarry would be located on land leased from Louis Sanders and William Engelage.
It is not known when sand production actually started at Klondike Quarry or why that name was chosen. According to a post office document, Klondike had a post office by 1898, twenty feet from the river and ten feet from the railroad tracks, so it is likely that production at Klondike had started by then. Apparently there was initially some confusion about the name of the new quarry. On that same document, which was completed by Klondike's first postmaster, A. J. Cummings, it is stated that Klondike had once been known as Becker. Apparently the potential wealth in the new quarry reminded people of the great wealth of the Klondike gold rush, which was happening at that time.
It was the geology of the bluffs along the Missouri River that provided the sand quarry with great potential for wealth. The rock formation along the bluffs at Klondike is known as St. Peter sandstone. The formation is approximately 120-130 feet deep at Klondike. The top twenty feet of rock was used for amber glass since the sand was yellow. Below that top layer was the more valuable white sand used in the production of for clear glass.
By 1908, the production at the Klondike Quarry was in full swing. The quarry had its own stop on the MKT Railroad, Klondike Station. Quarry manager A. J. Cummings had built a house at Klondike and moved his family there from Franklin County. A boarding house served some quarry men; a 1905 map shows three more structures on the site. According to a former employee, the men worked ten hour days and were paid fifteen cents per hour. They swung hammers to break the sandstone into smaller pieces which were then shoveled by hand into wagons drawn by mules to the mill. Newspaper ads from 1903 and 1906 announced the hiring of as many as thirty men needed “to shovel rock.” The daily wage offered was $1.60-$1.65. The weekly charge at the boarding house was $3.25, the equivalent of two days' pay.
In 1906 the workings at Klondike extended about a quarter of a mile along the face of the bluff. A source from the era described the work as follows:
The sand is “shot” down and gathered by means of tram cars drawn by mules to central points in the several pits, where the cars are picked up by cable and drawn to the mill. The sand is dumped directly into crushers, from which it passes to the driers. It is elevated to the screens and then falls into bins, from which it is drawn off into railroad cars for shipment. There are twin mills built on the terrace capping the steep slope between the railroad track below and the base of the sandstone. Each mill is equipped with Gates gyratory. . . the position of the sand bed, high in the bluff, is of advantage in many ways. . . while difficulties were encountered in the erection of the mill on the steep face of the bluff, its position in relation to the sandstone is of advantage, for gravity is made to play a large part in the process of handling the sand from the quarry to the railroad cars.
The Sand Mill in 1908
Fire destroyed the mill on December 18, 1908. Damage at the quarry was $40,000. When the quarry resumed production in 1909, the quarry was at full employment, and business continued to grow. By 1910 a night shift had been added. During this decade employment ranged from forty to eighty. The 1910 population census shows that thirty-six residents of Femme Osage were employed at the quarry, including eighteen residents of the town of Augusta. Clearly the quarry was an important economic presence in the area.
Over the years a small community grew at the quarry. By 1909 Klondike had its own school which, according to one source, was also known as Salem School (In November 1936 the Augusta school board voted to move its school for blacks to Klondike, since all its black students lived there; that school met there in a building owned by Lizzie Robinson). Klondike had its own baseball team for awhile. For at least one year, the town even had its own black baseball team, the Klondike Browns. As previously mentioned, there was a boarding house at Klondike. Not much is known about this boarding house. In 1920 it probably was run by a black man, James Johnson, who lived next door to four quarry employees living in the same house. In 1923 management of the boarding house changed, and it changed again in 1927 when Rupert Mallinckrodt took over. The 1930 census lists Rupert Mallinckrodt as a widowed cook. Living at the same address were four quarry employees, three blacks and one white. A year later Rupert married, and he and his new bride Esther ran the boarding for several years.
Over the years safety was an issue at the Klondike Quarry. On September 20, 1922, a second devastating fire occurred at the site, resulting in $10,000 in damages. During the blaze, two large smokestacks fell, one severing telegraph wires, causing a disruption of services. At the time the quarry employed seventy individuals. A major hazard was the dust that resulted from the quarry mill, which threatened the workers with silicosis. In 1919 workers at the quarry demanded higher wages because silicosis was increasingly common among the workers. Some died from the disease including Theodore Fuhr, who passed away in November, 1928; the cause on his death certificate reads “silicosis” (Fuhr was employed at the quarry for both the 1910 and 1920 censuses). In November of 1935, Edward Lotte of Augusta was awarded $25,000 when he sued the Tavern Rock Sand Company because he had developed silicosis from inhaling silica dust from 1910 until 1928, the years he was employed at the sand works.
The small community of Klondike suffered a different kind of calamity in 1918 when struck by the flu pandemic that ravaged the world that year. In January a newspaper reported that another deadly disease, small pox, had broken out in Klondike. The newspaper reported that “all colored
The Quarry in 1918
people” were to keep out of Augusta, and that any quarry worker who went to work at the quarry would have to remain there until the outbreak was over. As a result, the quarry shut down for one week. A guard was posted at Klondike to keep blacks from leaving. It is interesting to note that there were no deaths from small pox in St. Charles County in January or February of that year. Did the reporter make a mistake? He may have meant influenza, because two residents of Klondike did die from the flu pandemic that month: Robena and Robert Mosely, the two year old twins of Douglas and Kate Mosely. A foreman at the quarry, Herbert Meyer, would die from the flu in February.
The Tavern Rock Sand Company continued production through the 1920's, 1930's, and World War II.Seventy people worked at the quarry in 1923. In 1925 Klondike employed eighty individuals and was shipping 1,500 to 2,000 carloads of sand annually. In 1926 the entire plant was remodeled to be operated by electricity, so the Eastern Missouri Power Company had to build a new line to the quarry because “strong motors” were to be installed there. The sand conveyor was enclosed to make the mill dust-proof.
In 1936 the Tavern Rock Sand Company was purchased by the Pennsylvania Glass Company, but the quarry's name did not change. The next year the quarry had a public auction of its remaining mules and harness. Klondike continued to function as a community in the years leading up to World War II, with a men's baseball team, its post office in the store operated by Leo Haupt, and its train station. The quarry's peak production occurred in 1945, when 235 tons of sand were produced to meet war demands.
After the war, the Klondike quarry continued its sand production. By 1948 the quarry had grown to 350 acres (but only two structures are indicated on a 1948 map). That year the Klondike Quarry produced more sand than any other quarry in Missouri. In 1950 the quarry employed fifty people, and the town of Klondike was indicated on a new United States Geological Survey map. By this time, working conditions were much better for the workers: “Suction fans were installed throughout the quarry and workers were equipped with respirators so as to reduce dust inhalation, which had previously been a health hazard. Routine visits from state mine inspectors insured the observance of safety standards.”
Work at the quarry continued through the 1950's, but the community of Klondike slowly vanished. Forty people were working at the quarry in 1959. That year one Augusta citizen said the quarry was the “lifeblood” of Augusta economically. However, by 1960 Klondike no longer had a store, a post office, or a train station, although the quarry still used the railroad for shipping its sand. Over the years, as the demand for glass bottles and containers decreased, the quarry employed fewer workers. When the quarry ceased operations in 1983, it was down to about fifteen employees. By then all traces of the community of Klondike had vanished.
The quarry in 1914
In 1992 the former quarry property was purchased by Hank and Jean Macler, who built a home there and started the Klondike Stone Company, selling boulders for landscaping and sand for golf courses. The Maclers also ran the Quarry House Bed and Breakfast at Klondike. St. Charles County purchased the quarry property in 1999. Klondike Park opened five years later. The quarry's sand silos still stand alongside the Katy Trail, and various ruins of quarry structures are easily found, especially down the bluff near the silos.
Although Klondike was once the location of a busy sand quarry, it is now home to a peaceful county park. The next time you are there, enjoying the incredible views from the bluff top or examining the silos on the Katy Trail, try imagining what the area was like when several dozen men worked there for the Tavern Rock Sand Company.
Newspaper Sources: St. Charles Daily Cosmos-Monitor: 28 April 1909; 26 May 1922; 24 January 1923; 18 February 1926; 9 June 1927; 6 November 1935; 21 August 1936; 12 October 1937;31 August 1938; 6 February 1950; 19 March 1959. Franklin County Tribune; 20 November 1891; 4 March 1892; 1 July 1892; 19 May 1893; 23 July 1897. Marthasville Record: 28 June 1901; 27 March 1903; 19 October 1906; 25 December 1908; 23 July 1909; 10 December 1909; 28 January 1920; 8 September 1922; 17 April 1925; 25 March 1927; 1 July 1927; 19 November 1937; 15 August 1947; 14 April 1950; 9 October 1953; 15 July 1966. Washington Missourian: 24 August 1950.
Other Sources: 1875 Atlas of St. Charles County, Missouri; 1898 Atlas of Franklin County, Missouri; 1905 Atlas of St. Charles County, Missouri; 1948 Atlas of St. Charles County, Missouri; Augusta, MO, quadrant, 1948 topographical map (ngmdb.usgs.gov); Augusta's Harmony by Anita Mallinckrodt; Darst Bottom by Yvonne Castens Prough; Digital.shsmo.org; Federal Population Censuses; “The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 in Boone-Duden Country” by Bob Brail (justawalkdowntheroad.blogspot.com); “The Katy Railroad in Boone-Duden Country” by Bob Brail (justawalkdowntheroad.blogspot.com); “Klondike Park” (sccmo.org); Klondike Park signage, St. Charles County Parks Department; Klondike Park folder, St. Charles County Historical Society; Missouri Bureau of Geology and Mines ,1918 (books.google.com); “Missouri Death Certificates, 1910-1972” (s1sos.mo.gov); Missouri Department of Natural Resources Geology and Mines Photograph Collection (mdh.contentdm.oclo.org); O'Fallon, MO, quadrant, 1903 topographical map (ngmdb.usgs.gov); Office of the Recorder of Deeds, St. Charles County, Missouri; Record Group 28: Records of the Post Office Department (catalog.archives.gov); “Settlement Geography in St. Charles County” by Sister M. Clarentia Gruenloh, unpublished thesis (St. Charles City-County Library); Shortt, Dave (phone interview); Small Glories by Daniel Brown; St. Louis, MO 1896 Letterhead: Tavern Rock Land Co. (ebay.com).