We checked out the cement plant on Riverveiw

[Chris]

I'm sure most of you St. Louisians have seen the huge cement plant on riverveiw south of the Chain of Rocks. We kind of scouted it out last Saturday. If you're going to go, dress appropriately, we didn't. It's a messy place, it's covered in cement dust, mud, and rocks. It wouldn't be bad if it was just walking around, but there's lots of climbing involved.

There's a gate that's been bent out of the way and we crawled through the hole. To the left is an old boat and straight ahead is the offices and stuff. To the right is a huge building with a gaping hole in it and a smaller 'pull-through' style building apparently either used for loading and unloading or maintenence of trucks.

We went in the huge building first. We walked alongside it looking for a way in and saw a concrete conveyer housing that went below ground. Looking down inside it revealed a walkway and a conveyer, on a gentle slope, leading about 20 feet down. It almost looks like it leaves the property and goes under the road. I'm beginning to wonder if the area is undermined for materials or if there might be a quarry over the hill across the street.

As we continued along the building, we saw a small opening and I crawled through it. But I'm the 'monkey' of our group and my friend coundn't make it, so he walked around the building while I was inside. The area I had just crawled into was a four foot wide shelf around a thirty foot deep pit. It appears that this building was really just a shelter for large piles of material, but the bins are mostly empty. There's a staircase that goes up to some catwalks, but it was getting dark and my freind still couldn't find his way in, so I joined him on the other side of the building. Getting to the other side is a pain. There's a huge pile of gravel and dirt about fifty feet tall, and the only way to get up it is to crawl at about 30 mph. Of course you only actually progress up the hill at about 1/10th the speed you're crawling. You're mainly just shooting gravel!

Once over there, another part of the main building was explorable. This place has several floors, but many of the ladders and stairs that connect them have been severed. There are holes in the floor so watch out! The bottoms of hoppers poke down through the ceiling.

We left that building and headed over towards a castle. Yep, a castle. The guy who bought the shoe factory and turned it into the city museum also bought this place and appears to be building a castle on top of an old foundation. Parked next to the castle is an old airport truck. The type with the box that goes up to the level of the doors on the plane.

We headed down towards some smaller buildings, and saw the lights on inside one under a garage door. We even thought we saw lights on in a construction trailer, but we later found out it was just a spot light from one of the other nearby industries shining through the window. This was enough to convice us to leave. We really only came to check out the place, and we'll have to go back soon. The underground conveyers have got to be documented as do the silos. This place could be really cool.

[memory_machine]

Is this site being used or is it abandoned? I am not familliar with it.