I had the fortune of visiting Minnesota recently and made a stop in Des Moines. Both communities have a very outdoors focused parks and recreation vision. We stopped at a city park in West Des Moines which was an old sand and gravel pit along the Des Moines River. We intended to play at the park but there was a beach and before I knew it, 2 boys were in the water and the other 2 were building sand canals and castles. It was March 25th and the weather was warm enough that people were actually swimming. We have stopped before in small podunk towns in Minnesota along the way and found similar old fashioned swimming holes where someone dumped some sand and called it a beach. Why don't we have that here?
Well at one time we did. It was called Drennon Lake and it was a half mile south of Barry Road and Line Creek Parkway. The dam was the old KC-St.Joe Interurban railroad and it was accessed from Barry Road. Pictured below is the 1964 aerial of the Lake which I located using the blue lines. The Interurban is the orange line. Barry Road is the red line and MO-152 is the purple line. This is upper Line Creek Valley in 1964.
The USGS topo map from the 1960's shows the lake and how sparsely populated the area was. AA is Green Hills Road and the purple shading on the left side of the picture is the Coves. The lake is shown in the light blue and the Interurban Railroad straight double dashed line that forms the dam.
I am not sure where the Drennon name came from-family, trading post, stop on the train? I have an old 1930's road map that shows a town of Drennon at the intersection of Barry and Green Hills Road. People would pay to fish and camp on the site. The Line Creek Trail follows the camp access road and there are some remnants of outhouses near the lake. The land to the north of the lake used to have a pay to ride horse stable and parts of the old barn foundation are still there.
As one drives along Barry Road, there is a little shack on the southeast corner of Barry Road and Line Creek Parkway that is shown in the lower left side of the first picture and a close up in the second.
I don't know exactly what the shack was for but I have some ideas I have learned over time.
Theory 1: This was the bait shack for Drennon Lake where people would stop and pay for tackle and permits to fish and camp.
Theory 2: It was the bath house for the family that lived right where Robinhood Lane is today. The family that owned that track used the bath house since indoor plumbing hadn't been invented.
Theory 3: It was a trading post for people crossing the original state line on their way from the town of Barry to Leavenworth.
One theory I do know isn't true is that it was a stop on the Interurban. The railroad crossed Barry Road where the large power lines cross next to the car wash and gas station and Barclay Club apartments are today.
According to long time valley resident Kent Mayfield, the lake existed until the Plaza Flood of 1977 when the dam broke and the City of Riverside was flooded. Once the Line Creek Trail is complete, the part around Drennon Lake will be one of the best stretches of trail in the metropolitan area.
"I am not sure where the Drennon name came from-family, trading post, stop on the train?"
for someone reading this well after the fact, the name source was posted 4 days before to this post.
http://www.linecreekloudmouth.com/blog/2012/03/history-of-old-route-aa-aka-waukomisgreen-hills.html
in the first two images you can see the Drennon family owned land in the same area
Posted by: Kevin | 10/21/2013 at 09:35 AM