New Developement on the Site of the Old St. Louis Highlands Amusement Park

My first and only recollection of the Highlands Amusement park in St. Louis was when I was about five years old. I remember looking up at the huge wooden roller coaster and thinking about my Lego set back home, wondering how long it had taken for someone to put the thing together. I was too little to go on the roller coaster and to tell the truth, I really don’t remember going on any of the rides, except maybe the kiddie’s coaster. I remember being intrigued by a moving mannequin outside of the haunted house. I really wanted to go inside, but my older brother Larry nixed that possibility, telling my mom that it was much to scary for me and that I might have a heart attack if I saw what was inside. We finally decided that I could go into a place called the enchanted forest. It was a fairy tale land with themes from the Brother’s Grimm and I was fascinated by it. I think it might even have sparked my later interest in fantasy and science fiction.

The Highlands first opened in 1896 along Oakland Avenue near Forest Park in St. Louis. It started out as a beer garden. Beer was big in St. Louis back then and I think that a lot of things started out as beer gardens. It was billed as the “Finest and largest open air enterprise in the Midwest.” The park featured a scenic railway and a vaudeville theatre, as well as band concerts featuring John Phillip Sousa himself. The wooden Rolling Derby roller coaster was the main adult attraction. It later became the famous Comet. A lot of the rides and most of the buildings were constructed out of wood. It would turn out to be the park’s downfall. In 1963, just about a year after I was there, fire swept through the park, destroying most of it. A community college now occupies some of the land.

Last fall two new loft apartments opened on the site of the old Arena, which was adjacent to the Highlands. The city blew up the old Arena, which was the home of the St. Louis Blues hockey team, in 1999. At $37 million, the first two apartment buildings represent the largest chunk of the $80 million that will be invested. They have also built a five-story 146,000-square-foot office building that was fully occupied right after it was built. There is also a new 126-room Hampton Inn and a Krieger’s restaurant. Still in the works is a 90,000-square-foot five-story building that would take up four acres of the site’s southeast quadrant. The project is described as a medical type building that will house an assortment of medical professionals.

All well and good, but I still would have liked to see the location preserved as a historic amusement park. There used to be several small amusement parks in the area, but now all we have is the Six Flags in Eureka, and that’s 30 minutes out of town and almost impossible to get into on the weekends. Maybe they’ll at least have a picture of the Highlands in the lobby of the hotel.