Historic Monarch

Monarch Station was a whistle-stop railway depot on the Rock Island Railroad, originally known as the Saint Louis, Kansas City and Colorado Railroad when established in 1886-87. The settlement of Monarch, earlier called Atherton and then Eatherton, straddled what is now the Wildwood and Chesterfield border near Wild Horse Creek, Eatherton, and Centaur Roads. A post office opened in Monarch in 1895 and operated until 1907, with William Sutton serving as the community's only postmaster. The Sutton family lived on the top floor of the grocery store and remained there after the store closed. For several years, a restaurant and tavern stood at the bottom of the hill east of the current railroad crossing, known for its chicken and steak dinners, and people came from St. Louis by train on weekends, with some guest cabins on the property. Some area residents did not have electricity until 1941. The Chesterfield-Monarch Levee, originally called the Monarch Levee, became the major flood protection structure along the Chesterfield Valley after farmers first built it to protect bottom land from frequent Missouri River flooding. Over time the levee was expanded and heightened, and much of the farmland it protected was absorbed by development. During the Great Flood of 1993, the Chesterfield-Monarch Levee failed about one mile north of the old Monarch Station site, and floodwater from the Missouri River inundated the entire valley.

Wildwood, Missouri · United States