History of Sunset Hills

Sunset Hills celebrates its 50 years of incorporation in 2007. But the area’s historical significance dates back to the 1700s.

Early Settlers to the Area

The Meramec River forms the western boundary of the City of Sunset Hills. The hills to the east held many fresh and mineral water springs; the bottomland of the Meramec Flood Plain offered excellent farmland, which is why the Mound builders and later Native Americans settled in this area. Their artifacts still remain around the old sulphur and salt springs. The first white men to settle in the area came to buy and run the salt springs.

The oldest settlement along the Meramec was in the area around Fenton and Sunset Hills. Spanish Grants of land were given to John Hildebrand in 1777, Gabriel Cerre in 1779, and Jacques Clamorgan in 1791. Hildebrand owned land in present Valley Park and Fenton, then sold his land to Thomas Tyler who later sold it to Clamorgan. Clamorgan ran the mineral spring on the west side of the river in Fenton. Gabriel Cerre owned the sulphur spring in Sunset Hills. (Gabriel Cerre’s father-in-law is Auguste Chouteau, founder of St. Louis.) Many French-Canadians received other original land grants.

Daniel Boone’s Link to the Sappingtons

The Spaniards invited Daniel Boone to Missouri with promises of large grants of land if he would come and be a judge to the Indians of the area. Boone settled north of the Missouri River. In his travels back to Kentucky, he told the settlers about the wonderful land available in Missouri.

John and Jemima Sappington listened with interest to Boone’s stories and in 1804 sent their sons Thomas and Zephaniah and son-in-law Jonah Parke to explore St. Louis County and buy land. They bought 1,920 acres of land from Peter Didier in 1804 in the Crestwood and Sappington area.

In 1805, the Sappingtons came with their 17 children and friends to settle along Gravois Road. This road was on a map of 1804 as the road leading to Clamorgan’s spring. The Sappington family populated the area that came to be known as Sappington. Their homes were scattered over a broad area of Crestwood, Sunset Hills, and Concord.

The German Influence

Settlers from Kentucky were not the only people interested in the Sunset Hills area. Germans escaping the tyranny of their homeland came to America in the 1830s. Many of them came to Missouri, drawn here by the beautiful descriptions of the land found in a book written by a German named Durin who had visited here. He spoke of how the Meramec Valley resembled Germany’s Rhine Valley. This book was published in Germany and was evidently fairly well read. Families with names like Rott, Theiss, Crecelius, Wohlschlager, Werner, Mueller, VonTalge, Mehl, Ochs, Schmidt, Happel, Wolf and Schneider filled the South County area.

Gravois Road Leads to Growth

The well-traveled Gravois Road has a colorful history. The road has been used as a covered wagon trail, a farm-to-market road and a cattle trail as well as stage line. It has the distinction of being the first county road to be paved in the entire state, done in 1914. Gravois Road was very important to the growth of the area.

The Seeds of a Prestigious Community are Planted

The lush, rolling acreage on Rott Road where Laumeier Place sits was once home to a historical log home built in the 1800s. In the 1980s, the log home was purchased, dismantled and preserved to be rebuilt elsewhere by the new owner.

In the early 1900s, Rott Road became a prized area for summer or year-round residences by esteemed businessmen such as Edwin Lemp and Adolphus Busch Jr.

In 1910, with interested members living nearby, August A. Busch Sr. decided St. Louis needed a social club in south St. Louis County. He purchased more than 40 acres of land in what is now Sunset Hills to build a facility known as the Sunset Inn. This became one of the finest dining and entertaining facilities in the St. Louis area. With the purchase of additional land, came the addition of a premier golf course, designed by Robert Foulis, one of the earlier golf professionals and course architects. A swimming pool was added in 1918 and became the first pool in the area to allow men to swim “topless.”

Additional buildings were added, including a clubhouse and men and women’s locker rooms. While World War II caused the club to close temporarily in 1937, it reopened the following year, and Anheuser-Busch sold the club to the membership in 1945. Today, this prominent club is called Sunset Country Club.