Climbing the 100-foot tall lookout tower in Sunridge Park north of Hillsboro can be a little intimidating, especially when the handrail to the first platform wobbles just a bit, but as you make it to each of the 11 platforms on the tower, the view increasingly broadens into a vista of farms, forests and hills in Jefferson County and beyond, making the trip worthwhile.
From the 10th platform, Hwy. 21 stretches out before and behind you. The pine trees below sway in the wind, and the deep blue hills on the horizon provide a beautiful backdrop for buzzards gliding by at eye level.
In the stairwell, vandals have marked their own climb up the tower with graffiti and carvings, but the view, it seems, has even inspired the mischievous, who have left a bit of verse on the last two steps before the 10th platform. “That with loves resplendent, tender, in the sunset’s bosom lie,” it says.
The tower, which is in the Goldman area, is the second one to be built at the location. The first tower was made from pine poles and stood more than 60 feet tall atop the 950-foot-tall ridge, according to historian Dave Hallemann. The original tower is thought to have been built around 1940 by the Civilian Conservation Corp, he wrote in an article that’s on the Jefferson County Historical Society’s website.
“However in 1940, when a war mentality gripped the nation, the public was barred from lookout towers to prevent sabotage or covert signaling,” Hallemann wrote.
After the war, in 1948, the Missouri Conservation Commission purchased the 6-acre property from Roy and Milerna Yates for $1 and used it as a fire tower.
Former Goldman Fire Protection District Chief Gary Peters, 73, remembers spending some time at that tower when he was a junior firefighter and his dad, William Peters, was the Goldman Fire chief.
“When I was in high school, the local conservation agent, Jack Koch, used to pick me (and other junior firefighters) up from school for brush fires. Whenever the call was canceled, we didn’t want to go back to school, so he’d say, ‘I better keep you around,’ and we would sit up there until the end of the school day,” Gary Peters said.
One time, the young firefighter even spotted a fire from the tower.
“I was looking through the scope they had up there, and way off in the southwest I could see a bunch of smoke,” Peters said. “I asked (Koch) if they were working a fire in that direction. They weren’t working it … yet.”
The fire was in Sullivan (about 40 miles as the crow flies), he said.
Some say that, on a clear day, in the other direction, the Gateway Arch can also be seen from the tower.
Back in the late 1950s, Peters and his friends, who were staff and counselors for a girls camp at Don Bosco Camp in the Hillsboro area, made it a tradition to walk to and climb the tower each year.
“When camp was over, they would have a party for the guys and counselors and a lot of the guys had girlfriends and after the party, we’d walk up to the tower and sit up there a while and then walk back to camp,” Peters said.
He said even then the tower was a little scary.
“I’ll tell you when it was wooden, it was pretty rickety,” Peters said.
In 1969, the wooden tower was taken down and the new metal one was put up, according to Missouri Department of Conservation ombudsman Tim E. Smith, in Hallemann’s article.
The property was deeded to the Jefferson County Parks Department in 1980, when the conservation department no longer needed it, according to Craig Leutkemeyer, recreation division manager for the parks department, in the article.
The metal tower has 110 steps, including the concrete steps at the bottom and the last platform at the top. There are 11 platforms in all, but the one at the top is enclosed with a metal cage and the best view is from the 10th platform.
The parks department continues to monitor the structural soundness of the tower, and while someday it may have to go, parks director Tim Pigg said, today visitors to Sunridge Park may still climb the tower, at their own risk.
“It’s been a fixture in Jefferson County for a long time,” he said. “But everything has a time limit. Nothing is forever.”
