Note from Executive Director Mark T. Cockson: As we prepare to move the Gateway Council office to Normandie Hall on the campus of UMSL and open the Great Rivers Hostel on Oct. 13, a “look back” seems appropriate for the Gateway Journal. This story was originally written by Dick Leary, creator of the Moonlight Ramble(R) and former editor of the Gateway (to the Ozarks) Newsletter, and published in the May-June, 1988 issue on the 50th anniversary of our Council.

50 Years of Hostelling in the Ozark Area

By Dick Leary

Today many people in the Ozark Area Council (now known as the Gateway Council), and many other councils across the country, spend a lot of time and effort developing youth hostels for the use of Americans and visitors from over 60 nations around the world. It’s hard, lengthy, and sometimes frustrating work. Sometimes a lot of effort goes “poof” at the last minute. However, standards and requirements — and therefore expense — are much higher today than was once the case.

In the early days of Ozark Area Council the emphasis was mostly on developing and opening youth hostels, and far less on the program aspects we have come to enjoy today. There were planned activities, a few, but most people planned their own outings using the network of youth hostels that came into existence. True, many would be considered “chicken coop” facilities, but perhaps our expectations were a little lower in those days.

Alice T. “Tea” Peck, mentioned in the first of these series of articles, was a genius at convincing people their barns, farm houses, and, yes, sometimes their chicken coops, would make fine youth hostels. The Ozark area soon became dotted with the familiar, sharp-cornered triangle signs designating a hostel facility. Houseparenting was often on the honor system because facilities were sometimes physically removed from the residence of the houseparents. And sometimes they had other occupants.

This writer once took a rather long tour using many of these facilities. At Shannondale (not shown on the map because it became chartered in the 1940s) there was a nice stone cottage for the girls, but the facility for the gentlemen was one-half of a mule barn. After a very long, hot, sweaty day of well over 100 miles on gravel roads, the hay of the barn looked mighty good. A companion, however, was a little reluctant when he discovered that the other half was the residence of two fine, healthy and somewhat night-owlish mules who showed over and over again that they were possessed of fine mule voices.

The map shown here was on the reverse side of the letterhead of the Council as it existed in about 1939-1940. No attempt has been made to clean up the reproduction, but it does show that even in those days hostels came and went for many reasons. But it does show some surprises. A youth hostel in Kirkwood? Yes, and we’ll tell you where if you’re interested (it’s a subdivision now).

The hostel in Desoto, Cedar Brown Farm Youth Hostel, mentioned in a previous article, was the flagship of the fleet. “Tea” Peck believed that “her” hostels should be about a day’s ride apart. Remember that bicycles were crude and heavy compared to today’s models, and roads were often dirt and gravel. About 50 miles apart seemed right….a scale that was the standard in most other parts of the country. So after riding in some direction for 50 miles or so, she’d look around. And if she happened to see a building she thought might be suitable, the owner was in for a sales talk. An amazingly large number were “sold” on the idea.

But the late ’30s led into the early ’40s, and with World War II came gasoline and tire rationing, no new cars, the end of the Great Depression, and war jobs for many. That meant, for many, that a short vacation was taken by hiking or more often, by bicycle.

With the end of the War in 1945, cars and gasoline became available, bicycles were put back in the garage to rust away, and the magnificent chain of hostels crumbled and closed. The emphasis on bicycle touring did not develop until many years later, and by that time the hostels, for the most part, were no more, and their owners passed away.

But in the days of the hostels shown on the map, you could bicycle from Desoto to Richwoods, on to Onandaga where you slept in the cave, then to Sullivan; or you could go south and stay near what are today known as Johnson’s Shut-ins, or at Graniteville, now known for the nearby Elephant Rocks State Park, and go on to Davisville and Berryman, now better known for the trail named after it. And if you didn’t mind the mules, Shannondale, very close to the Current River, was a great destination.

The owners of Shannondale, incidentally, are currently interested in the possibility of re-chartering it as a hostel. We’ll see how that works out. Sadly(?), the mules are gone.

Footnote: A reader of the previous article, which mentioned riding back from Cedar Brown Farm on the MoPac train on Sunday afternoon, reminded us that sometimes the hostellers rode in the baggage car with their bicycles….and on more than one occasion held square dances in the moving baggage car!