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Creve Coeur History

Developing into Creve Coeur

Formerly a farming community, Creve Coeur has developed into a thriving city with a balance of business and residential — making it a great place to live and work.

Creve Coeur strives to keep its history alive. The name “Creve Coeur” is derived from a French phrase that translates as Broken Heart. Many legends explain the origins of this unique name. One tale tells of an Indian princess named Memetonwish, whose unrequited love for a French trapper led to tragedy. Heartbroken, the Indian princess is said to have thrown herself from a ledge overlooking Creve Coeur Lake, which then reshaped itself in the form of a broken heart. Another story attributes the name to a French woman who settled in the area with her husband and detailed her unhappiness in a letter to a friend, and upon penning her return address, she simply signed “Creve Coeur.”

A third story states that Dutch settlers constructed a fort, which they named “Creve Coeur,” to warn the French they would be broken hearted should they dare to invade. Lastly the name may also be attributed to a flood, which gave the lake its name due to the heartache it caused.

Regardless of how the name came about, Creve Coeur became a popular location for German settlers in the early 1800s, and although they continued to speak German in their everyday lives, they left the French name of Creve Coeur intact.

Creve Coeur has a strong sense of its past, and strongly advocates the preservation of its historic treasures. Sites such as the fully furnished one-room Lake School House, The Clester Log Cabin (circa 1829), the Hackmann Log Cabin, which served the Hackmann family from 1842-1925, and the Tappmeyer House, which was built between the years of 1880-1884, lend themselves to the strong foundation this area has built upon. Hard work, education, quality of life and vision played as big a part then as they do today.

Creve Coeur officially became a city in 1949, with a population of 1,878, and has grown to include nearly 17,000 residents. While much of what is Creve Coeur was built after 1970 to accommodate the migration of residents from the larger city of St. Louis, there are still more than a dozen century-old homes which attest to the staying power and steady growth of this modern community.

Olivette, whose boundaries include just less than three square miles, was originally established as a farming community in the mid-1800s. Although the city as it is known today was officially incorporated in 1930, in the 1800s it was known as Central, and was of great significance to those pioneers who traveled west. The community of Olivette straddled an old Indian Trail, originally named old Bonhomme Road, which was later renamed Olive Street Road, and is now present day Olive Boulevard. The corner of Old Bonhomme and Price Roads lay exactly half-way between the Port of St. Louis on the Mississippi and Howell’s Landing, which lay on the banks of the Missouri River. Location made this the optimal stop for travelers to stock their wagons. At the time the town boasted a general store, a blacksmith’s shop, and a grog shop as well as a handful of homes and farmsteads.

While the corner of Price Road and Old Bonhomme Road was important to those who were passing through on their travels westward, it is also of significance to those who have made their home in Olivette over the years. There has been a schoolhouse located at this corner for the past 150 years, and when the original two-room school was built, it was the only brick schoolhouse in the county.