WALNUT PARK
Locale and Topography
Tucked away in the extreme northwest corner of St. Louis is the Walnut Park area, which is bounded on the north by Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries, on the west by the City Limits and on the south and east by the Mark Twain Expressway. Its land generally rises toward the west in a gradual incline with principal drainage being across the rolling topography of the cemeteries toward the river.
Land Divisions and Early Roads
Original land divisions of the area, now covering Walnut Park and the adjacent large cemeteries, were American surveys confirming Spanish land grants. U.S. Survey #1895 included the land now bounded by Florissant, Thrush, Bircher and Shreve Avenues, the balance of the area to its east as far as the Mark Twain Expressway was a part of Survey #458. West of #1895, reaching beyond the City Limits, was Survey #1913, while eastwardly, Calvary and Bellefontaine Cemeteries comprised portions of several other surveys. Survey #1895, which was originally owned by the St. Cyr family, was later broadly subdivided into seven tracts each of about 800 feet in width and of varying lengths across the survey from the present Florissant Avenue to Bircher.
By 1856, their owners, eastward from the west end, were James Clemens, Jr., Charles Chambers, Octavia Boyce, Mrs. Mary Harney, Richard Graham, Bryan Mullanphy and Mrs. Ann Biddle's estate. East of Survey #1895, was the farm of Henry M. Shreve, while to the west were tracts owned by Pope and Jacobs, Mary J. Switzer, William H. Jennings and the McLaran family.
Access to the present Walnut Park area from St. Louis was at first obtained by use of Bellefontaine Road (now North Broadway) and thence by way of Calvary Avenue, which was irregularly connected to a county road, that is now part of Union Boulevard. In the period after the Civil War, additional routes were developed, the principal ones being a road toward Florissant, now West Florissant Avenue, and also Bircher Road. Pitzman's 1878 map of St. Louis shows several north-south streets penetrating into the Walnut Park area, these are Kingshighway, Goodfellow, Semple Avenue, Bellefontaine Avenue (now Geraldine) and the present Euclid Avenue, then called Snead. Read more
(Source: https://stlouis-mo.gov/archive/neighborhood-histories-norbury-wayman/walnut/text26.htm)
