Waterway in Forest Park’s East Reopens with New Views, Commemoration of Forest Park Forever Co-Founder Caroline Loughlin
What’s new to see:
A bridge over the new Taylor Kindle River extension to Jefferson Lake, with a picturesque bend in the river accompanied by the sound of water gently trickling over the weir.
A recirculating waterfall and overlook at Clayton Avenue Jefferson Lake’s south end
A boardwalk curving over the water of Jefferson Lake, providing views like never before
A waterside path and pavilion at Bowl Lake, with the Seven Pools waterfalls also repaired and reactivated
New fishing perches for the nation’s oldest urban fishing program
Completion of “The River Returns,” a decades-long vision that recreates a linear, connected waterway traversing the Park from west to east
ST. LOUIS — The story of Forest Park Forever begins with a group of concerned citizens who were determined to reverse a 1,300-acre space’s shocking decline.
But the story of Forest Park itself? That was largely written by two of those pioneers, who literally “wrote the book” on the Park’s first 100 years. In the 1980s, Caroline Loughlin, who would become a Forest Park Forever co-founder and president, and Catherine Anderson wrote Forest Park, the definitive, 300-page history of the Park’s first century. The book was the culmination of 10 years of research with fellow volunteers from the Junior League of St. Louis, which Caroline served as officer and director.
Caroline Loughlin
A mathematician, former IBM programmer, and New Orleans native, Caroline was an astute analyst, an avid volunteer and a lover of open public spaces that brought people together. In writing Forest Park, she and Catherine leveraged those skills, including using one of the first ever personal computers to harness the hundreds of references they unearthed and to write the book itself.
All of this made Caroline a perfect match for the many organizations – like the Junior League, the Saint Louis Zoo and Forest Park Forever – where she served as a volunteer after she and her husband, Philip H. Loughlin III, moved to St. Louis in 1965. Having already helped nonprofits in previous stops in their careers, Caroline had a keen eye for how to help these organizations advance their mission.
“She was very versatile,” Phil says of his wife, who passed way in 2013. “She knew the business side, the numbers and she brought that to her philanthropic work. But this goes back to college,” he said, recalling their days at Cornell University. “Caroline was a great writer and one of the leaders of the Cornell Debate Association. She would assess the situation, identify a need and conceive a solution.”
A Book Project Leads to Something Bigger
Caroline had the advantage of looking at the Park’s challenges with decades of perspective.
By the late 1970s and 1980s, Forest Park was one of those places in need, showing the effects of decades of deferred maintenance. While the book project helped highlight what the Park once was, the people seeking to bring it back to glory faced the daunting task of organizing, coming up with a plan and rallying community support. But how?
Caroline’s husband recalls her addressing the founding needs of the emerging nonprofit conservancy, Forest Park Forever, the same way she approached everything: methodically, comprehensively and with determination.
“She looked at it as nothing new,” Phil said. “No problem existed at the Park that hadn’t been faced, and solved, somewhere before.”
Phil continued, “I remember early sessions in our home or at public meetings. Large and dedicated groups of volunteers, using posterboards, laying out plans – with the notion that they could band together and address the issues the Park faced. But Caroline had the advantage of looking at it with decades of perspective.”
Community Continues the Restoration Effort
Today, Phil remarks at how Forest Park Forever has grown and the community effort to restore and sustain Forest Park has continued. In commemoration of Caroline’s impact in getting it all started, the Loughlin family made a major gift to Forest Park Forever in support of the project to complete the Taylor Kindle River connection to Jefferson Lake and the related enhancements happening along its shores in the eastern section of the Park. The project caps a long-term vision that dates back to Caroline’s time with the organization, bringing a connected waterway back to Forest Park and enabling visitors to enjoy all the beauty and nature that comes with it.
This spring, that vision has become a reality.
After a year of construction and maintenance when water levels were kept low, fishing has resumed just steps away from the densely populated Central West End.
Over the past seven months as the project’s infrastructure neared conclusion, Forest Park Forever’s stewards were adding the long-term touches by planting trees and shrubs and improving irrigation. Now visitors can see those plantings – over 9,000 in the ground thus far, and 20,000 when the project completes – start to take shape amid stunning new views along the water.
And anglers who have long enjoyed Jefferson Lake now have several new spots to cast a line, part of the longest-running urban fishing program in the country, run by the Missouri Department of Conservation.
The very existence of the waterway and the plans behind it can be traced back to the leadership of Caroline and her contemporaries in the early days of Forest Park Forever. As a founding member and president, she brought her financial acumen and big-picture insights to the organization. Foreseeing the need for a master plan to guide restoration and improvements, she served on two mayoral committees to develop one, and the Forest Park Master Plan was adopted in 1995.
Among the Master Plan’s vision was this waterway, which addressed the presence of stagnant ponds and low-lying areas of water, remnants of the River Des Peres that was buried under the Park for the 1904 World’s Fair. “The River Returns,” a project to restore a river in Forest Park, ultimately spanned decades and now sees its final piece coming together in the Park’s eastern end.
“This is exactly the kind of project she would have enjoyed seeing in the Park,” Phil said.
“In memory of Caroline Loughlin and her significant contributions to Forest Park.”
A plaque honoring Caroline and her contributions has been installed on the new pedestrian bridge that spans the waterway’s final connection just north of Jefferson Lake.
Caroline’s work on Forest Park history piqued her interest in historic landscapes, an interest that she pursued for the rest of her life. She became a go-to reference for landscapes designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, and the National Association for Olmsted Parks invited her to join its board of trustees in 1989. Recognizing her contributions to the field, the Library of American Landscape History named Caroline its Preservation Hero in 2005.
Though Caroline and her family eventually moved to the northeast, her legacy and that of the Loughlin family lives on in St. Louis’ Forest Park…forever.