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Timeline

1700 – A group of Kaskaskia Native Americans made camp at the mouth of a river. They named the river “La Riviere des Peres”, or The River of the Fathers, in honor of the two French priests who joined them.

1767 – Three years after the founding of St. Louis, the original River des Peres (RdP) site was re-settled by French Canadians and Native Americans. The new settlement was named Carondelet and later was incorporated into the City of St. Louis.

1897 – Flooding of the River des Peres 1901 – For the 1904 World's Fair, the portion of the River des Peres that flows through Forest Park was covered by temporary wooden channels. Shortly thereafter, that portion of the river was placed entirely underground.

1905 – Flooding of the River des Peres.

1912 – Flooding of the River des Peres.

1913 – Flooding of the River des Peres.

1915 – Flooding of the River des Peres killed 11 people and forced 1025 families from their homes.

1916 – St. Louis Mayor Henry W. Kiel called for a hydrologic study, which was completed by W.W. Horner and presented to the St. Louis Board of Public Service in 1916. St. Louis voters chose to implement Horner's recommendations, which cost 11 million dollars. His proposal included extensively engineering the section of the River Des Peres that lay within city limits. Using rainfall and runoff data, Horner prepared a new route for the river. Horner's plan apportioned the river into sections, which were lettered "A" through "J." from 1924 to 1933, the River Des Peres was drained and its course changed.

1924 to 1933 – The River des Peres Sewerage and Drainage Works: the river’s banks were re-graded and paved, bends in the river were straightened and in some places the river was directed underground to join the sewer.

1930s – Following high demand for preventive safety measures brought on by a series of fatal floods, the river was channelized, with its upper sections redirected underground in large sewage pipes.

1933 – Open drainage ditches (what was left River des Peres) bred mosquitoes that caused St. Louis encephalitis by biting infected birds and then biting humans. The 1933 outbreak affected at least 1,095 people, killing about 200 and damaging the central nervous systems of the rest. 1933-1940 – The City of St. Louis and then the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) hired unemployed workers to pave the muddy banks of the River des Peres. As a result, the lower channel took on a drastically different appearance. During the seven years of paving, the channel acquired its now-familiar look, part natural and part engineered.

1937 – St. Louis encephalitis returned and cases roughly followed the course of the new River des Peres.

1939 – St. Louis encephalitis returned once again and cases followed the course of the River des Peres

1954 – The Metropolitan Sewer District was created and charged with cleaning up the river. They stopped the slaughterhouses from dumping offal straight into the sewers; they built pump stations to reroute sewage and treatment plants to remove and incinerate solids before the water rejoined the Mississippi.

1972 – MSD finished its new primary-treatment plants.

1972 – Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which demanded secondary treatment of wastewater.

1973 – Flooding of the River des Peres.

1986 – Purdue to Pennsylvania Ave Bridge Channel Improvement– Completed by MSD in 1986. MSD installed reinforced concrete vertical walls and did some channel stabilization.

1988 – The US Army Corps of Engineers prepared a feasibility study for the River des Peres with the purpose of reducing the flood damage to existing structures, reducing the stream bank erosion; and increasing recreational opportunities, in order to receive authorization by Congress so that the Corps could evaluate and design a project for stabilizing the River des Peres.

1988 – Supplementary Information Report was prepared to expand the Feasibility study by including the stream segment within the University City branch of the RdP from 82nd Street. upstream to a point just downstream of I-170 in the vicinity of the Kempland Avenue Bridge. Then MSD Executive Director Frank G. Kriz expressed MSD’s intent to be the local sponsor for the River des Peres project.

1988 – The American Society of Civil Engineers added the River des Peres Sewage & Drainage Works (1924 project) to its list of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks for the calculations involved, the largescale trench dewatering methods; and the soil stabilization procedures.

1990 – US Army Corps of Engineers project received authorization – however not all improvements were made due to limited funding. MSD moved ahead on improvements in the segment from downstream of I-170 to 82nd Street in University City (completed in summer 2004).

1993 – Flooding of the River des Peres. Water backed up from the Mississippi combined with local drainage, forced the River des Peres to record levels in the summer of 1993. St. Louis Residents were driven from their homes, some losing their home permanently.

1994 – South of Hafner Court to 82nd Channel Improvement – MSD completed around 1994. MSD installed concrete walls and rock revetment.

1994 – The EPA issued a CSO Control Policy intended to eventually bring CSOs nationwide into compliance with the Clean Water Act. EPA’s CSO Control Policy (US EPA, 1994) requires permit holders with combined sewer overflows to develop a long-term plan for controlling their CSOs.

1997-1998 – Testing of metropolitan St. Louis streams by the US Geological Survey found that River des Peres had a fecal-coliform count of 85,000 (compared to 1,300 in rural Williams Creek).

1999 – MSD prepared and submitted its LTCP to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) but due to conflicts between Missouri law and the federal Clean Water Act, MDNR could not approve the submitted plan.

2000 – The EPA’s CSO Control Policy (US EPA, 1994) became law with the passage of the Wet Weather Water Quality Act of 2000.

2001 – River des Peres Watershed Coalition founded by Shelley Welsch and Bob Sotton.

Articles about the Historic River des Peres

• Jackie Dana, Why St. Louis tamed the River Des Peres; An engineering marvel and a century-old eyesore, Aug 09, 2022
  retrieved from https://unseenstlouis.substack.com/p/why-st-louis-tamed-the-river-des
• Michael Allen, The Harnessed Channel: How the River Des Peres Became a Sewer, 2010.
  retrieved from http://preservationresearch.com/infrastructure/the-harnessed-channel-how-the-river-des-peres-became-a-sewer/
• Jeannette Batz, A Sewer Runs through It, Riverfront Times, 6 December 2000.
  retrieved from https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/a-sewer-runs-through-it-2473041
  archive available at https://web.archive.org/web/20240623202453/https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/a-sewer-runs-through-it-2473041
• Chad Garrison, Rare Glimpse Into Underground Tunnels of River Des Peres, Riverfront Times, 25 October 2011.
  retrieved from https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/rare-glimpse-into-underground-tunnels-of-river-des-peres-2597439
  archive available at https://web.archive.org/web/20230203041907/https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/rare-glimpse-into-underground-tunnels-of-river-des-peres-2597439

A Watershed is a region or area bounded peripherally by a divide and draining ultimately to a particular watercourse or body of water. Every drop of rain falling on the River des Peres watershed eventually ends up in the River des Peres. The health of a river is dependent upon the health of its watershed.

Protect our Watershed:

• 10 ways to protect streams by water consciously landscaping your yard
• Reduce Water Pollution
• How We Protect Watersheds