Valley Park: A Photo Essay by Susie Morice

VALLEY PARK:  A Place with Highs and Lows

Because the town of Valley Park in the southwest edge of the St. Louis metro region, sits amidst the ever-flooding Meramec River, an active Union Pacific railroad, a grain elevator, and a now very busy Hwy 141, it is an amalgam of extremes.  Not only is it in this geographic mess, it is also studded with a more than eclectic collection of commercial enterprises, some clearly profitable and some hanging by a thread.  Valley Park is a multi-dimensional community. 

At the residential edges and as the roads rise to higher ground and away from the Meramec River valley for which it is named, the look of Valley Park is more prosperous.  Houses shift from the ragtag look along the river to suburban St. Louis County affluence.  The overall range of housing prices is probably $20,000 to over $300,000, according to Zillow.com.  Needless to say, there are have’s and have-not’s in Valley Park.

Since the levees have been built subsequent to flooding over the last few decades, the financial status of Valley Park has changed.  Levees are a part of life and survival in this community.  Logically, prosperous residential areas are seated high and struggling businesses and scrappier housing sit low.  All the while the Meramec River rises and falls with the intense rains and unforgiving heat waves of the St. Louis area. 

Bike Path

Were I to judge what rises as one of the biggest assets of Valley Park, I would determine it to be its touches of nature.  Along the Meramec we can now find a bicycle path as well as Simpson Lake. 

Simpson Lake

Joe Smentowski

A visitor, Joe Smentowski, who frequents the lake and the Grand Glaize creek with his canoe is clearly delighted with the diversity of the water features in this community.  Though Joe lives in the Webster Groves area, he finds it worth his while to hoist his fiberglass canoe to the roof of his car and head to the VP waters on a regular basis.  An ecologist, Joe, waxed on about this community’s perhaps dubious asset.  Along with the Meramec, I would also mark the abundance of natural Missouri trees – lots of oak, hickory, and cottonwood rise tall in Valley Park.  Small riverside houses stay shaded in the intense August heat thanks to huge trees. 

Grain Elevator

Concrete plant

Valley Park has a definite set of contrasts.  Poverty and a torrent of traffic ripping right through its center, most on its way somewhere else, pervades a hefty slice of this small community; yet, robust businesses and a thriving school district anchor its history and a Surely changing future.  Shop owners are quick to share stories of growing up in VP, and seem happy to call it home.  Though tempting to join the roaring traffic, replete with concrete trucks and landfill dump trucks, and zoom to other destinations, it may well be worth a bit of small town investigation to wander the boundaries of VP and perhaps end up sipping tea at the Tea Room in the Valley or belting a brew and whoofing down a steak at The Tavern.  Valley Park has a bit of everything.