By Pauline Masson –
As a history buff, I spend a lot of time pouring over old newspapers and penned snippets of personal experiences. Here at the end of 2023, it seems like a good time to reflect on how past events and bold thinkers brought us what we have now.
When he and his brother inherited half of the three-story (and long neglected) McHugh-Dailey Emporium building at South First and Orleans streets, Jim McHugh visited his old hometown to consider how to inject new life into the 1911 landmark.
In was 2001. There was no Bigfoot, no Landing Hub and no train-watching pavilion in Pacific Station Plaza. D’angelo’s Pizza was the only ‘cooked to order’ restaurant in Old Town.
A city trash-collection yard sat next to his building. A cluster of rusted and leaning trailers in a mobile park abutted the trash yard. Along South First and St. Louis streets, an area that was a bustling market place in McHugh’s youth, the town slumbered.
Walmart, which had come to town and wiped out the mom and pop shops that gave Old Town its history, had moved on, leaving residents with no place to buy shoes, jeans or even tee shirts.
Anyone who has poured over Don Brocato’s map of Downtown businesses in his youth, can grasp the vitality of main street shopping district of the 1930s and 1940s where families could buy anything they needed – fresh baked bread, groceries, medicine, jewelry, furniture, toys, candy, clothing and cars.
An attorney and self-taught political organizer, McHugh looked at the sleepy town and neglected structure he, his brother Bill and cousin Virginia “Ginny’ Dailey had inherited, and launched a baffling, almost make believe, campaign to restore Pacific to the glories of his youth.
Pacific is a frontier community – nestled between a metropolitan center and the open country – with access to transportation, a river, thriving agriculture, and surrounded by huge open parks. McHugh said the town had all the elements that a self-sustaining community needed to attract new businesses, new residents and visitors.
Some people were skeptical, but, what the heck, the town was in a funk. If even a fraction of what he envisioned was possible, many were willing to give it a try.
Mayor Jill Pigg organized the Pacific Partnership with the mission to revitalize Old Town Pacific.
The next mayor Jeff Titter established a city downtown committee. Titter and public works commissioner Ed Gass kicked off the campaign that improved South First and St. Louis streets adding vintage street lights and eventually a vintage clock.
The Partnership staged a Railroad Day celebration in the former City trash yard that McHugh had staked out for an outdoor theater and public event venue. Retired BNSF VP and steam train aficionado Jim Schwinkendorf brought a historic steam engine to town for the celebration. The event attracted the largest crowd in downtown Pacific that some residents had seen since the day WWII ended.
One by one, spurts of activity breathed new life into Old Town.
Tim Baker Chamber of Commerce president and Bill McLaren, founder of the PCAC, a coalition of civic groups – launched a campaign for a bed tax to fund tourism. They go some help from then Missouri representative Harold Selby.
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When Bigfoot 4 x 4 relocated its headquarters to Rose Lane in 2015, and held its first Open House here, it was clear tourists had found Pacific
Today the entire town – just six square miles, paralleled by railroad tracks, the Meramec River, Historic 66 and Interstate 44 – is tickling with a rebirth that has breathed a new confidence in hometown America.
Gina and Mark Pingleton’s Adams Garden, a grassy nook at the base of Sand Mountain dedicated to the memories of lost children, has evolved into a picturesque mini park that stops traffic.
The McHughs and Daileys, with investment and their own labor, restored their former retail emporium and its third floor Opera House and brought back live shows, public events and weddings, giving Pacific the only historic opera house in the U.S. (that could be found) that is still in operation by its original owners.
The McLaren branch of the Howe family turned Howe Valley Farm, one of most visited places in Pacific in the 1930s when acclaimed horticulturist John Howe was planting daffodils and grafting nut trees there, into a bustling country wedding venue.
After several tries, the City of Pacific purchased the Red Cedar Inn, the 1930s Route 66 landmark, and created a local history museum/visitor center.
The City also bought Jensen’s Point, the 1930’s Shaws Gardenway lookout west of the Red Cedar, established it as a city park, restored it and opened it to the public.
Four sit-down restaurants – The Pacific Brew House, Brown Jerry’s, Little Ireland and D’Angelos Pizza – now dot the downtown. The first three are located in historic buildings. And favorite son Greg Omer is restoring a former bank and later pharmacy building, with a mission to turn it into another trendy eatery.
The former Kroger store on St. Louis Street is now a modern bank. A former clothing store houses a lady barber shop. A retired NFL linbacker cooks up barbecue and pizza in a fancy imported Italian pizza oven on the site of the town’s first babershop.
Scenic Regional Library on LaMar Parkway is now a high tech learning center and public events venue that goes far beyond anything the 1950s Garden Club ladies dreamed of when they bought a handful of books and offered to lend them readers.
This is not intended a paean to Jim McHugh – although he would deserve it – but is meant as a nudge to those who say there is nothing to do in Pacific. As we near the end of 2023, I just wanted to pay tribute to what has grown here from all those history stories I read.
