Oct. 2007 - Volume 68, Issue 10
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NextGEN Departments
Take a Break at Powder Valley
Get natural relief from urban stress at this St. Louis area nature center.
Looking for a break from your routine? Are working, housework, laundry, cooking and cleaning out the garage wearing you down? Are the kids staring too much at the TV or their video games? Do you wish there was a place that had something for everyone, got you outside and didn’t cost anything?
I’ve got the perfect answer. Visit Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center in Kirkwood. Even though it’s been around a long time, there are plenty of new things to see and do there.
Powder Valley CNC is a conservation interpretation facility nestled on 112 acres of oak-hickory forest on the northeast corner of Interstates 270 and 44 in Kirkwood.
During the mid-1980s, the Missouri Department of Conservation, looking for a location to serve people in the St. Louis area, purchased this land from the Alwal Moore family.
Once they’d found just the right place, development began. Constructing the building took about 15 months. The doors opened to the public for the first time on Oct. 25, 1991. Since then, more than 1.5 million people have visited the area.
Powder Valley owes its name to the property’s Civil War use as a storage site for explosives. After the battle of Pilot Knob, Union militia stored blasting powder in a cave located in one of the valleys near this area to prepare for a possible invasion of St. Louis by Confederate troops.
About This Article
Author
TAMIE YEGGE manages Powder Valley CNC. She has always loved nature and grew up camping, hiking, canoeing and fishing with family, traditions she now shares with her own children.
Photographer
Photographer DAVID STONNER, shown working on aerial photographs of the Mingo Basin in southeast Missouri, joined the Department of Conservation in May 2007. He lives in Jefferson City with his wife, Angela, and one year-old daughter, Maggie. David enjoys weekends sailing on Stockton Lake and angling for fish anywhere he can cast a dry fly.
