APPLE GATE INN

This historic log building was completed in 1930 for Union Electric, by Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation and designed by Louis La Beaume, a noted St. Louis architect and partner in the architectural firm of La Beaume and Klein. The Adirondack styled 6,500 square foot floor plan contained twenty-nine rooms. The building was constructed from Western white pine logs, brought into the area by rail from Pacific Northwestern United States logging companies. Union Electric sold the Lodge, a Union Electric built hotel, pleasure boats, forty thousand acres of lakefront property, and eight hundred miles of shoreline in 1945 to Cyrus Crane Willmore for $320,000. Willmore was one of the more important St. Louis real estate developers, creating much of what is the modern St. Louis landscape. Willmore's dream was that the newly created lake would soon be a vast vacation land. He knew that the chance to escape the city and still retain many of the city conveniences would appeal to wealthy St. Louisans. The new lake would provide a class of wealthy urban sportsmen a way to recapture a type of pioneer lifestyle through hunting and fishing. The Egan Lodge served as his primary residence until his death from heart disease only four years later. Although the building remained in his estate and unoccupied from 1949 until 1969, the local residents have, since, always referred to the property and building as the Willmore Lodge. The property was sold in 1969 to Harold Koplar and again in 1988 to North Port Company. Union Electric re-acquired the building and adjoining property in 1996 in order to insure the Lodge would be retained as a National Historical site and to protect the integrity of the shoreline from the Lodge to Bagnell Dam. The repurchase took place upon the bankruptcy of North Port Company and only amounted to the building and about thirty acres of undeveloped shoreland property. This time, the winning bid price was $1.06 million. During that same year, Union Electric officials approached the Lake Area Chamber of Commerce with a planned use for the site. Union Electric proposed that the Chamber use the building for its offices, develop a visitors center, and historical repository for Lake History. The Chamber would pay for restoration costs and Union Electric would provide the facility and grounds to the Chamber on a long term lease for $10.00 a year.

Source: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 1998; prepared by Laura Johnson, Preservationist, with Benjamin Cawthra, Historian.

List of Works Consulted
Carole Tellman Pilkington,The Story of Bagnell Dam,Lake Area Chamber of Commerce,1989
National Register of Historic Places,NPS form 10-900-a,section 7.
Buford Foster,That's The Way It Was,1978
T. Victor Jeffries,Before The Dam Water,1974
AmerenUE,Bagnell Dam Construction Photos,1929-1931
Video Productions Unlimited,Current Photos,1990's

Carriage House, Ha Ha Tonka State Park, MO

The "castle" was built by Robert McClure Snyder, wealthy self-made businessman. Snyder, impressed by the beauty of the lakes, springs and bluffs, purchased 2,500 acres in 1903. On the top of the highest bluff he decided to build a European style mansion. He envisioned 9 (or 10) greenhouses, a watertower and carriage house and a castle-like mansion. He hired Scottish masons to do the stonework. The mansion was
designed by a Kansas City architect, Adrian Van Brunt.

The construction began in 1905, but it stopped soon: Snyder died in a car accident in 1906. Heirs of Snyder finished the mansion in 1926 but they couldn't enjoy it: the family fortune was soon gone. A luxury hotel operated in the castle but in 1942 it burned to the ground by accident. The fire also destroyed the carriage house. The place was completely abandoned and vandals torched the watertower in 1976. Two years later the state of Missouri bought the estate and the ruins and transformed it into a
state park. The water tower was reconstructed and the forest and lakeside were saved from the real estate agencies.