Our History

 In 2025, we  celebrate a momentous occasion—our 60th anniversary.  Founded in April 1965 by visionary leaders like Leo Drey, Davis Biggs, and Byron Schubel, Open Space STL was born as the St. Louis region’s first activist environmental and conservation group. These pioneers recognized the need for action to protect the region’s natural treasures, and their early efforts led to the creation of iconic spaces like Queeny Park, Bee Tree County Park, the Chubb Trail, and Castlewood State Park.

As we approach this milestone, we honor the legacy of those who came before us, including Ron Coleman, our inaugural Executive Director, whose leadership laid the foundation for the organization’s enduring impact. Open Space STL remains as passionate and steadfast as ever in its commitment to protecting our natural environment, saving threatened lands, and leading by example both locally and nationally.

One of the clearest examples of our enduring leadership is Operation Clean Stream, the longest-running watershed cleanup event in America. This year’s event was a powerful reminder of why our work matters. Berton Roueché’s evocative words in The New Yorker in 1975, as he described the serene beauty of the Meramec River and his hope that it might remain unspoiled for future generations:

“The river, winding in from behind a point of woods on the right, was wide and slow and a shining bottle green... It was the loveliest countryside I had ever seen in America — the loveliest and the most serenely peaceful and fulfilling.”

Those words capture the essence of why we do what we do. Today, thanks to the passion and dedication of our volunteers, staff, and board members, the Meramec and so many other places of natural beauty remain protected and restored.  Our 60th anniversary fills us with hope and ambition. The year will be a time to honor six decades of environmental leadership, to reflect on our shared achievements, and to inspire the next generation of conservationists. 

We are reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s wisdom: “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

Nature sustains us, uplifts us, and connects us. It is our privilege to protect it.

In the memorable year 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed the many challenges of the Great Society; the musical Beatles descended upon America; the first U.S. troops landed in Vietnam; and Martin Luther King Jr. led a freedom march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

In St. Louis, in 1965, the nationally renowned Baby Tooth Survey, shepherded in part by Washington University environmentalist Barry Commoner and the influential Greater St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information, demonstrated the harmful presence of the radioactive isotope strontium 90 in local children’s teeth as a result of cold war atomic testing. There were four local/regional nonprofits focused on outdoor recreation, the natural world and land preservation—Sierra Club; Nature Conservancy; St. Louis Audubon Society, and the Webster Groves Nature Study Society.

Sensing a timely opportunity to actively acquire more land for parks and recreation centers in St. Louis County and to seriously examine the degradation of the lower Meramec River and encourage its preservation, three enlightened residents agreed to establish an action-based citizens group.

On April 29, 1965 the Open Space Council for the St. Louis Region was formed. Its founders were Leo Drey, whose Ozark timber holdings were said to be the largest in Missouri; St. Louis attorney Davis Biggs, and Byron Schubel of the Jefferson County Abstract Co. in Hillsboro. The new entity was hailed as St. Louis’ first activist environmental/conservation group. Its mission today is nearly the same as in 1965: protect, conserve and sustain the natural environment, parks and rivers.

With 41 members--prominent women, bankers, attorneys, scientists, educators, planners, and business executives--the new board of directors marked its first meeting at LeChateau Restaurant in Frontenac by declaring the Meramec River to be of “utmost priority.” Several weeks later, 12 additional board members were seated. Quick to begin work, board committees were appointed for membership, finance, publicity, planning, landowner canvass and technical advice.

A document called the “St. Louis County Park Plan” was circulating within the community; it attracted the board’s attention. Written by two reputable county planners, Alfred Kahn and Walter Eschbach, the plan recommended acquisition of at least 5,000 acres of new parkland and 24 new parks. (The county park system had 33 parks at the time). Not surprisingly, the newly founded Open Space Council was viewed among community leaders as the most logical vehicle to take the lead in securing the land and growing the park system. 

In August 1966, steered by Open Space Council members who wrote the ballot language, circulated petitions and financed the promotion, a $25 million parks referendum was submitted to voters. The vote fell short of the required two-thirds majority, so another Open Space-led referendum was re-submitted in November 1966—with the same disappointing result.   

Finally, in November 1967, after vigorous campaigning and heavy underwriting by the Council, the parks bond issue passed.  One outstanding early result of the passage was acquisition of the 680-acre Edgar M. Queeny tract and the first two county recreation centers. In 1969 voters approved another parks bond issue that again was spearheaded by the Open Space Council.

In 1967 the Open Space Foundation was formed by the board as a tax-exempt group “to acquire and hold property for parks, recreation and similar purposes.” Its members included the chancellor of Washington University; the president of Southwestern Bell Telephone Co.; the president of May Co. department stores, and the mayor of St. Louis. The Foundation’s initial move was to purchase the 192-acre Nims estate overlooking the Mississippi River near its confluence with the Meramec. The Foundation raised $137,500 and secured the matching funds to acquire what is now Bee Tree County Park. 

In honor of prominent attorney R. Walston Chubb, an original Open Space board member and a leader of the Foundation, his peers at the Foundation helped finance the creation of what is known today as the very popular Chubb Trail that connects West Tyson and Lone Elk parks in St. Louis County.

Following the victorious parks bond issue, the Open Space Council was persuaded by Barry Commoner among others to organize the region’s first open space forum. Held at Washington University in November 1968, the regional conference reviewed air, land and water pollution challenges and adjourned after forming another citizens action committee, the Coalition for the Environment. 

Al Foster, owner of Creative Public Relations in Clayton, told the board in 1967 that Boy Scouts in southern Missouri had been cleaning up parts of the Current River. “Perhaps the Open Space Council could do the same for the lower Meramec River,” he said. 

Board member Bill Schock, an avid boater and outdoorsman, seconded Foster’s idea and strongly persuaded the board to undertake the river project as soon as possible. Guided by Schock and Foster, the first Operation Clean Stream occurred in August 1968 with 50 volunteers trolling the river for trash and tires from Pacific to Valley Park. 

Clean Stream’s main purpose “is not only to clean up litter but to maintain a public awareness of the Meramec River for its open space and recreational potential,” Schock told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

In the long term, however, the project has been equally successful in ridding the river of litter and calling attention to its natural beauty and recreational potential. In 1973, Foster said “There have been larger (river cleanups) on a one-time basis, but no continuing program in the nation equals Operation Clean Stream in terms of numerical involvement or area covered.” 

Today, Operation Clean Stream, patrolling the Meramec and its five tributaries, is America’s longest continuing urban river cleanup effort. It’s estimated that over 100,000 volunteers have helped gather nearly 20,000 cubic yards of litter, including almost 20,000 tires since Clean Stream’s inception.

Representatives of local Falstaff Brewing Corporation suggested in late 1968 that a beer can cleanup could be conducted as part of Operation Clean Stream. Somewhat indignantly, the executive committee responded:  “…while commendable, a beer-can cleanup does not fall within the purview of the Open Space Council.” 

But it did! Two years later Falstaff was handing out beverages, litter bags, and other items at the annual Clean Stream event—and using Clean Stream as the model for a short-lived “Clean America” campaign to sell Falstaff beer nationwide.

For at least six years, various Open Space Council committees argued how best to restore and rejuvenate the Meramec River and the rich green corridor enveloping it. In particular, the Council eyed the hundreds of substandard and derelict clubhouses that packed the riverbanks. 

Thanks to the Open Space Foundation that raised nearly $750,000 to buy some 1100 acres abutting the Meramec and secured state matching funds, Castlewood State Park was born. Today it is the crown jewel of the lower Meramec and remains one of the major accomplishments of the Open Space Council

After Castlewood, the board took steps to acquire and open the first three public access points on the lower Meramec—at Times Beach, Allenton, and Glencoe.   Through its leadership, the board set in motion the first annual field inspection of the lower Meramec by the St. Louis County health department as well as the first state study of the river’s fish content, a study that revealed high levels of recreational game fish. 

Later, the Council partnered with the St. Louis County Parks Department to provide initial leadership for the fledgling Meramec River Recreation Association and, in 2006, convened leaders of various river-related nonprofits to form the still existing and very resourceful Meramec River Tributary Alliance.

In 2007 the Council planned and coordinated an elaborate Meramec Basin Summit, drawing hundreds of participants. For nearly ten years the Council sponsored the Meramec River Expedition, annually attracting businesses and other organizations interested in preserving the Meramec.

In 1972 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to dam the Meramec River to form a 77,000-acre 65-mile long national recreational area in the Meramec Valley, the Open Space Council strongly criticized the proposal because of the incalculable havoc immense flooding would have on wetlands, farmlands and fields. The Council went so far as to employ a consultant (Jerry Sugerman) to fight the dam and help pave the way for a regional citizens vote on the project. The vote was overwhelmingly negative forcing the Corps to reluctantly de-authorize the dam’s construction in 1982.

One recent Open Space Council program involving the Meramec is the unique Passport to Clean Water. The Passport project, now held annually, educates young people about the Meramec watershed including its fish and wildlife, its drinking water, recreational uses, and ecology.

The Meramec hasn’t been the Council’s only cleanup project. Years ago, in conjunction with one of the first Earth Day celebrations, Open Space volunteers provided the first cleanup of streams and water courses in Forest Park, an annual undertaking that continues to this day.

In 1967, the Council board—decades before discussion elsewhere-- debated a provocative idea to establish a state or national park at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. 

In 2004, the Edward “Ted” and Pat Jones Confluence State Park opened. In the early 1970s the board called for a conservation area near the confluence. The Columbia Bottoms Conservation Area was the eventual result. 

The board, pushing for a linear park along Gravois Creek in South County, wrote the ballot language for a voter referendum that approved the future Carondelet Greenway, now known as Grant’s Trail. 

In 1974, the Council urged the development of a metropolitan parks district, an entity that finally came to pass in 2000 and is recognized today as the Great Rivers Greenway District.

As the years rolled on, the Council was the primary catalyst in the early 1970s for a gift from the still-existing Alberici Foundation that established the 95-acre Meramec Bend Park, now known as Unger County Park. 

It was also the pre-eminent voice for obtaining 490 acres (plus matching funds) near Imperial, Missouri that is known today as Mastodon State Park.

Later, the Council took a serious interest in the former Cragwold estate overlooking the Meramec just north of I-44. Cragwold had been the home of Edwin A. Lemp, a member of the family that owned Lemp Brewery, a pre-Prohibition brewing giant in south St. Louis. Lemp’s pal, George Vierheller, director of the St. Louis Zoo, was given permission to house some of the zoo’s excess mammals such as llamas, yaks and Japanese sitka deer on the estate’s 95 craggy acres which Lemp had licensed as a federal game preserve. 

In 1971, local homebuilder Russell Emmenegger purchased the long-abandoned Cragwold and thereafter revealed plans to convert the acreage into a 150-unit luxury condo development called Cragwold Park. 

The Open Space Council vehemently opposed the plans, persuading Kirkwood city officials to initiate a local referendum on Cragwold’s future. After voters turned down the condo plans Emmenegger was persuaded to donate his land--now a property identified as Emmenegger Nature Park.

In the late 1980s, when a local developer proposed building custom homes and commercial buildings on 938 acres of the gigantic Ranken estate in west St. Louis County, Ellen Alton, a member of the Open Space Council board, sensed the need to intercede. 

“To achieve such extensive development,” she said, “the developer would have had to dynamite and level forest, hills and ridges on the property.” 

Alton, a persevering organizer, was named president of the Friends of Forest 44.  After nearly four years of wrangling, plus a statewide alliance of 300 individuals and 17 organizations, also headed by Alton, the state acquired the land in 1990 for $4.5 million. Alton and the Open Space Council were acknowledged as the “principal community force” that led to what is now the Forest 44 Conservation Area.

In its watchdog/advocacy mode, the Council stoutly opposed in 2000 a 250-home proposed venture atop Florissant’s Charbonier Bluff, the highest point in St. Louis County and the only Missouri landscape on the National Register of Historic Places. 

It strongly opposed physical encroachments earmarked for Forest Park—a St. Louis Art Museum parking lot and a building addition by Barnes Hospital. It successfully opposed a suggested sports stadium and fine arts center for Creve Coeur Lake County Park plus two threatening proposals for Edgar M. Queeny County Park: an 18-hole golf course and a plan for 1300 townhouse apartments and 200 homes. 

In late 2013, the Council was the main coordinator of successful citizen efforts to prevent St. Louis County from closing 23 county parks because of alleged financial shortages.

When Kirkwood officials sought to acquire the 9.5 acre site containing the long forsaken Meramec Highlands Quarry, the Open Space Council stepped in with technical assistance to help the city obtain a critical Land and Water Conservation grant, even offering to hold title to the property while awaiting word of the grant. 

After many months and multiple meetings with Council executive director, Ron Coleman, Kirkwood finally received the grant. Today the land is open under the name Meramec Highlands Quarry at Dee Koestering Park. 

Koestering and her husband were Open Space Council members who had alerted the Council when their home—the only home-- on the grounds -- was up for sale, triggering the tangled process of converting the acreage into a city park. “This project turned out to be a model of cooperative conservation,” Coleman said later.

In 2004, the Council helped a citizens’ group take possession of 6.5 acres of some of the last urban woods in Webster Groves.  Through a bridge loan of $27,000 and an outright grant of nearly $29,000, the Council enabled the acquisition of what is now Shady Creek Nature Sanctuary by bringing in the Missouri Department of Conservation, which provided additional funds. 

Included in the parcel was the 2-acre Magner Woods addition named in memory of Marshall Magner, a popular Webster Groves entomologist and conservationist. More recently, the Council donated $50,000 to EarthDance Farms in Ferguson to significantly help complete the purchase of 14-acre Mueller Farm, the oldest organic farm in Missouri.

The Open Space Council for years has been keenly aware of the pristine qualities of 13-square-mile LaBarque Creek Watershed near Eureka, MO. LaBarque’s water quality is exceptionally high; its fish content lists more than 50 species and there are untold numbers of endangered plants nearby. The Council worked with other groups to write the LaBarque Creek Watershed Conservation Plan and assisted in public outreach and education programming.  It was the lead player in helping to form the very active Friends of LaBarque Creek.  Open Space Council also raised the funds to purchase 15 acres of Meramec bluff property that faces LaBarque Creek near the Glassberg Conservation Area.

On the eve of its fiftieth birthday, the Open Space Council granted $47,000 to the city of Sunset Hills to help purchase its seventh park, the 16-acre Nancy Eschbach River Trail Park along the Meramec River. The late Nancy Eschbach was the wife of Walter Eschbach, an emeritus member of the Open Space Council. The Eschbachs, who lived nearby, often hiked the future park grounds.

Annual meetings have always been highlights of the Open Space Council, starting with the first such gathering aboard the River Queen showboat in 1966. Perhaps the most colorful meeting in the first 50 years was held May 25, 1968 when U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall came to town. In the morning he presided over the formal dedication of the Arch in downtown St. Louis. After lunch with Open Space Council members on a Meramec River gravel bar he took a Council-sponsored helicopter ride over the Meramec Valley and that evening at the Union Electric Country Club was the speaker at the annual meeting. Tickets cost $2.50 each. 

In the wake of the Udall appearance, the Open Space board unanimously elected him an honorary member of the Council, the only one so far. 

St. Louisans have continuously supported the Open Space Council, including momentous gifts from two local women. In 1973, Mrs. Elsie G. Monell donated $500,000 toward a possible Walter R. Gerak Park in memory of her late brother. Instead, with Mrs. Monell’s approval, the large gift was bundled with funds that helped secure Castlewood State Park. 

In 2006, Barbara Grace, a retired St. Louis school teacher, gave the Council an unrestricted gift of $1 million dollars. Much of the money was used to match grants as well as to develop new programs. Grace died in 2009. 

“Barbara loved the work of the Open Space Council and attended many of our functions,” former executive director Ron Coleman wrote. “Her gracious donation…has and will continue to allow our organization to pursue its work for the future and remain a free and clear voice for important land and water conservation initiatives.”

In its first half-century, the Open Space Council employed part-timers to work on bond issues, promote programs, and run the office. Two well-known area environmentalists were given the title executive vice-president—Al Foster and Roger Pryor—but neither held their post more than six months because of budget problems. 

But in 1999, Ron Coleman, who had served a term as president in 1992 and had run Operation Clean Stream as a volunteer for many years, was named the Council’s first full-time executive director.   Coleman took over the Council at a time when assets were low and programming was struggling.  When he left, the organization’s finances and prospects were at their highest level.

One parcel of land atop the Meramec River near Eureka challenged Coleman’s experience as a parks and recreation executive, negotiator, and fundraiser, plus his patience, for most of the 14 years he served as the Council’s top executive.  

That 430-acre parcel, owned by a member of the socially prominent Buder family for more than a century, was on the market.  Early on, Coleman and the Meramec River Recreation Association searched for a possible buyer. Gus Buder, the current owner, had wanted to donate the land but was constricted by a sizable debt on his property. 

Coleman went on to identify half a dozen possible buyers but no deal was forthcoming. In 2003 the Wild Canid Center bought the Buder property for use as a wolf rehab and research center, but several years later sold most of the land to the Missouri Department of Conservation because it couldn’t handle the mortgage. Dr. Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, was brought in to help find a buyer for the remainder of the property with the hope of keeping the land under supervision of the conservation department.

Coleman then worked with Sunny Glassberg, prominent St. Louis philanthropist and widow of 22-year Open Space Council board member Myron Glassberg. She and her family trust, the Mysun Foundation, had shown a passing interest in the land years before. Once the Glassberg family’s interest was renewed, negotiations with the conservation department heated up and, as a result, the department bought the land for $4.9 million, thanks mainly to a major donation from the Glassbergs. 

In May 2013 the Myron and Sonya Glassberg Family Conservation Area opened to the public. Throughout the negotiations, Coleman was the principal lever that kept the project alive. The Buder property acquisition became the longest and most detailed project in the Council’s first fifty years.

Coleman left the Open Space Council late in 2013 after a remarkable tenure in which he brought in numerous partners; new funders such as the Monsanto Fund, Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy and the US Forest Service to mention a few and in 2003 inaugurated the Open Space Council Land and Water Awards. 

He re-organized and enlarged the scope of Operation Clean Stream and in 2007 initiated Operation Wild Lands (OWLS); In 2006 he was named Missouri’s water conservationist of the year. He was also president of the 100,000-member Missouri Conservation Federation.

As we approach our 60th anniversary, Open Space STL retains its position as a leading activist organization focusing on the St. Louis environment, constantly intent on saving threatened land.