- [Jim] Missouri has just four left, but Jefferson County is home to one of them, and it's holding up pretty well.

- Now, can it take a car today?

No.

- [Jim] It's lying in pieces in Faust Park, but soon a One-Room Schoolhouse built for black students in the 1890s, will be reassembled along with something left behind from the very last class.

- That plywood came down, and this is what I saw.

- [Jim] It doesn't look like a museum, but this state historic site goes deep into Missouri history.

- It's one of the great mining districts of the world.

- [Jim] And he moved from graffiti to art fairs, but for him, it's all art.

- I was moving out of the realm of vandalism to a way of expressing yourself.

- [Jim] It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr.

Man, it's a good time of year to start getting out and do some exploring, taking some history, take home some pictures.

That's exactly what Brooke Butler did.

Headed to a spot that looks like it might have come out of a Bob Ross painting, but it's the real thing.

(upbeat music) - You don't have to venture very far to find a historic site in St. Louis.

So why travel 30 miles outside of the city to look at a bridge?

Well, this bridge, Sandy Creek Bridge, North of Hillsborough is one of only four covered bridges left in the state of Missouri.

Nearly 200,000 people visit this historic site each year, some just for the scenic photo of ops, but they leave with a deeper connection to our state's history.

(upbeat music) - Well, Sandy Creek Covered Bridge, as you see here was built originally in 1872, as part of a project to build six bridges in Jefferson County that connected Hillsborough, the county seat of Jefferson County to St. Louis County.

- [Brooke] Sandy Creek Bridge is the only bridge remaining of those six.

And although it's had its fair share of rehab projects over the years, from flooding, graffiti and general wear and tear that comes with being in nature, the bridge remains in good shape, and that's largely due to the careful attention in maintaining its historic structure.

- And a lot of the bridges at that time were being built on what is called the "Howe Truss Design."

So this was one of the prevalent types of construction for covered bridges.

So you can actually put more weight on the bridge.

Now, can it take a car today?

No.

- [Brooke] But it could, through much of the 1900s.

Bridge designs have continued evolved to support heavier traffic while remaining cost effective.

And the Howe Truss Design did exactly that.

The Truss Bridge was already a common design.

It utilized an interconnected framework of beams, usually in a triangular pattern since triangles cannot be distorted by stress.

The Howe Truss became the preferred method because of the prefabricated materials that were easily assembled and distributed.

And in theory, the only maintenance it needed was to tighten the screw and nut connections between the iron rods and wood panels, a much simpler task than joining two wood planks together.

- And what you have are beams that are crossed like this, and then upright rod iron rods.

And what happens is all your weight is supported by these iron rods and it is dispersed by the cross members.

- [Brooke] However, when iron became much more affordable, there was a quick pivot to metal made bridges, and soon the need for covered bridges became obsolete.

But in 1967, the state of Missouri took control of the remaining covered bridges throughout the state to preserve what are now historic sites.

- There were pieces siding was missing.

There was a tin roof, it was kind of leaning.

People had put pierce underneath just to help support it.

And so what had happened was the state parks came in, it started a new restoration project to pretty much what we see here, but traffic was still going over the bridge.

So in 1981, due to damage that was occurring over time, it was closed down to all traffic and a complete restoration was done.

And in 1984, it was reopened to foot traffic only.

(upbeat music) - [Brooke] The other cover bridges throughout the state, Burfordville in Cape Girardeau, Locust Creek in Linn County and Union Bridge in Monroe County are all maintained, and under the protection of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

- [Ken] We want people to come out and enjoy everything about up the site, plus it's a piece of history.

This is a piece of our culture, connecting us to our 19th century history.

(upbeat music) - Our next stop, we went to see something that's actually not ready to visit, but it's an important piece of St. Louis County history that's been saved, it's just that right now, it's sitting in pieces in Faust Park.

Still, we like stories about a work in progress.

They've got the spot all picked out at the Faust Park Historic Village, and it's in addition that doesn't simply fill a piece of ground.

It fills an important piece of our history, a One-Room County Schoolhouse for African American students.

- We do have a spot and it's really an amazing spot because not only is it right in the middle of our historic village, it's adjacent to a school school built in the same period This one here?

- for white students, correct the old schoolhouse, which you stand on Rankine Road, very close in time period to the African Schoolhouse will be erecting here on this spot.

- [Jim] This is a 1931 photograph of the students who went to the school on Wild Horse Creek Road in Chesterfield.

It was built 1894, African School House Number Four would serve black students until the end of school segregation in the 1950s.

Then it was turned into a garage and the log structure was hidden inside new siding and interior walls.

The county parks folks located it years ago had their eye on it, but it was after all somebody's garage.

- Of course, last year, the building was sold and the gentleman that bought it was gonna tear it down.

And he actually, wasn't very willing to donate it to the park.

- [Jim] All they had to do then was take it apart, move it, put it back together.

But remember, it is what they do.

- All of the buildings here within the village at Faust have been moved from elsewhere within St. Louis County.

So the staff here is very acclimated to making one building, go from one place to another in its same order and place, and everything.

- [Jim] So the modern era siding was removed, revealing the original log walls.

And then very carefully, inside and outside pieces were mapped and tagged.

And certainly not with Post-it notes.

(hammer thudding) - It won't wash away, the lettering won't disappear.

This is very, very hard to get out and so it'll be there when you need it.

- [Jim] Parks Educator Micah Kornblum, showed us how metal tags are marked and attached to each, and every log coded so that the pieces can't go in backwards or upside down.

- Sure, and there's side A, which is the front.

There's side B, which would be the right hand side.

There's C, which is the back.

And then there's D, which is the left hand side, okay?

And then you start.

(hammer thudding) - The inside walls were removed in large pieces and now they sit in a storage space.

Some of the pieces of the original schoolhouse were lost because the previous owner cut out the large garage door and an entryway to the house.

- Under here where the second window would've been, he just cut it out entirely down to the ground and made that the door into his home.

So some of these things have to be rebuilt.

- Right.

To see that, we headed to Faust Parks Wood Shop.

- They said, "Oh, I need this."

And they show us a picture.

And then we say, "Okay."

(chuckles) - [Jim] These guys are volunteers from the St. Louis Woodworkers Guild.

They've taken on the job of repairing or simply recreating things like doors shutters, and windows as historically accurate as they can.

- Like you see this original color probably and then they painted white over top of it.

And then years of grime and dirt and so forth.

- In windows, we gotta do?

- Four sets, eight.

- Eight?

- Eight frames.

Two of them were completely gone so we build 'em from scratch.

- [Jim] But when it comes to replacing damaged or missing logs, well, that's a very different kind of job, but there's park staff who have those old tiny skills.

- End up cutting a notch, something like one of these on this little log, this is a 15 foot log, so this would be one of the front logs.

(wood club thudding) - [Jim] The logs also then have to be trimmed to the right size.

(Axe thudding) Note the blue line that is used as the guide.

(Axe thudding) - That the lucky splits off.

- Our final stop was Faust Parks Old Barn.

- Well, here are the logs for the schoolhouse here.

- These are the originals?

- These are the originals here and back here.

- So, do these have the tags on them then?

- They do have the tags.

Tag B, this is tag B4, so that's the right hand wall.

And it's the fourth log up.

- Here too, is one of the discoveries that brings African School Number Four to life.

It had been hidden for generations behind the garage wall.

- That plywood came down and this is what I saw.

And I'm a retired school teacher, and this is thrilling.

- Count by threes to 60?

- Yes.

- Four times three equals question mark, 16 divided by four equals question mark.

To see this, wow.

- [Micah] Yes, it's been protected.

It has a special spray on it so that the moisture can't get to it.

But once it's inside the building, it will be doubly protected.

- It's amazing.

It's one of the most extraordinary effects I've ever seen.

And of course, that will live on with the building.

- This will be the first building we have that is solely an African American building.

So it's something that we've always wanted to preserve.

And we're really expecting, hoping to have it erected by late summer of this year.

- Our next story is also about an important piece of history, but this one, no way you could take it apart and move it.

There's too much above ground and below ground.

A while back, Paul Schankman headed for the heart of Missouri's Lead Belt.

(dramatic music) - [Paul] From a distance, it looks like the sort of place you'd want to avoid.

But every year, thousands passing by on Highway 32 in Park Hills, feel these will-be-gone buildings, beckoning them to come closer and explore the Missouri Mines State Historic Site.

A place frozen in time, frozen by time.

- This is not just an old mining district.

It's one of the great mining districts of the world.

- [Paul] There are lots of minerals and metals underground here, but the one that built the towns and fed the families of Southeastern Missouri was lead.

So it's no wonder the state's mining museum was established in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, close to the towns of Leadwood, Ludington and Bonne Terre, which is French for good ground.

- This diorama shows the very earliest mining here.

- In his younger days, Art Hebrink did a little mining himself, but most of his life has been spent working for the state as a geologist and an educator.

So in 1993, when the park system needed someone rock solid to run the mining museum, Art got the job.

It has been 26 years of heavy lifting.

- Most people are in the dark, absolutely.

I mean, it's very frustrating to me because I know how important this is and how large this is, and how it compares with other mining in the rest of the country.

This is mind-boggling large.

- [Voiceover] The Lead Belt lies in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains within 65 miles of St. Louis.

- [Paul] Missouri has been the nation's leading producer of lead for more than 100 years.

Lead mining here goes back more than 300 years.

And this museum celebrates that long history with a collection of curious minerals and a gallery of equipment used by the miners hired to get the lead out.

- This is an electric locomotive.

This machine is called the "Saint Joe Shovel," the drilling machine there that revolutionized mining everywhere in the world.

- Is this the real thing or is this the replica?

- Yes, the real thing.

All of this stuff's the real thing.

- So where did all this stuff come from?

Well, right here, the Missouri Mines State Historic Site used to be the federal lead company.

They started mining here in 1907, until they were bought by the St. Joseph Lead Company in 1923.

- [Voiceover] Arriving at the mine.

The men changed through their working clothes in change houses.

- [Paul] The buildings that we're here then are still here now, but the men are long gone because the lead is long gone.

The depleted St. Joe mine closed in 1972.

Four years later, the company donated the land and it's 150,000 square feet of rusty hobbled buildings to the state park system.

12 years after that, the site opened to the public, though visitors are only allowed to view the buildings from the outside.

- People really like this old rusty stuff?

- Yeah, they like the ghost town, kind of the ghost town appearance is what they like about it.

And the soft colors, I mean, we got artists and photographers.

And they go into terror mode, if you start talking about painting all these buildings with silver paint or gray paint or something, because these are nice, warm, soft colors that everybody likes.

I've had people say, "Why did you put this mine in this beautiful part of the Ozarks, why don't you have your mine out in Kansas?

Somewhere someplace like that?"

It's like, "Duh," you know what I mean?

Ore deposits are where ore deposits are.

They're very rare things.

And that's where you have to get that metal.

- [Paul] At its zenith, the St Joe Mine was 13 miles long and five miles wide.

So big, it had 15 entrances.

And so deep, a few spots could hold a building, 30 stories tall.

The floor of the mine was covered with 300 miles of railroad track used to get the men to the ore, and the ore to the surface.

The locomotives were powered by trolley wires, driven by men, better equipped for the job than me.

- Well, you put on the hat first, the light switches on there work.

So there's your taillights, headlights, the green buttons, the horn.

(machine honking) (chuckles) And this is what makes it go, you grab this and pull it that, we're not gonna go anywhere, of course.

Wow, you just went from like zero to 10 miles an hour in one or two seconds.

Okay, you're trained.

You could submit for some pay, you won't get any like a trainee.

- [Paul] The men who did this work for real were paid really well with plenty of opportunities for bonuses.

- This is the money job.

The guy operating this shovel is filling ore cars, now we're up to 2.7 ton ore cars.

This guy had to fill 40 of those in an eight hour shift.

My retirees tell me anybody, any good with this machine could fill 80 or a hundred in a day.

So way over bonus.

And I have one old gentleman who gets me aside every year, we have an open house in September to remind me that he holds the company record on this job at 203 in one day.

- [Paul] Along with the monetary incentive, the workers at St. Joe wanted to do good things for the company because the company did good things for them.

St. Joe Lead built many of their homes, nice ones and their hospital, their first bowling alley, their first golf course, a YMCA, a theater and equipment for local fire departments to keep it all standing.

And then there is a Lake of the Ozarks, formed by the creation of Bagnell Dam, built to meet the mining industry's need for more electricity.

- Listening to retirees, their number one thing that I hear about is the company carried all the employees through the depression.

They didn't lay people off and they weren't selling enough lead to do that.

Everybody knew they borrowed $10 million bank loans, and nobody will ever forget that.

- [Paul] At its peak, the St. Joe Lead Mine employed about 4500 people.

Most years, about 6500 visit the museum.

- You can depend on a bunch of people here late Saturday and late Sunday.

These are people from St. Louis who are at Johnson Shuts and on Elephant Rocks.

And as on their way, they see these buildings and say, "Whoa, what is that?

We'll stop there on the way home."

- That one.

- I know, ain't that neat?

It's pretty.

It's fricking awesome, like I had no idea, like it's super awesome.

- [Paul] He seems very excited about this.

- Yeah, he loves rocks.

Like I'm surprised he hasn't thrown some out from the shelve yet.

(chuckles) - That ones cool too, that one's cool too.

- Have you had offers to use this in some sort of a movie set?

- A few, not any great number of them and the ones I remember early on, they wanted to do some kind of war movie and they were gonna blow the place up, and we take a pass if they wanna blow our buildings up.

- [Paul] Though lead is no longer used in most countries to make paint or gasoline, it is still need to make other things like car batteries.

So a half dozen mines are still operating in Missouri, but in the part of the state known as the Old Lead Belt District, most of what is still visible from a once mighty industry are the chat piles it left behind.

At one time considered symbols of prosperity, and later as reminders of the environmental trade offs that come from rearranging the earth.

But that part of the story is not really part of this place.

They prefer to stick to the used to be's and accentuate the positive.

And for Art Hebrink, there is nothing that excites him more than drilling down on Missouri's leaded past.

- People come here and they don't have really very high expectations, but they come inside and it's like, "Wow, this is really cool, this is neater than I thought."

- That's pretty, that's pretty.

- So it's a thrill to me to see their eyes light up and learn all these things they didn't know about their state.

- [Kid] That one's cool.

- Finally, a story about a journey, not a physical journey, but a creative one.

Ruth Ezell on an artist who started out with a can of spray paint.

- [Ruth] Events like the Annual Shaw Art Fair in St. Louis are an essential link between creators, their followers and prospective clients.

- These are all again, acrylic or spray paint, and I've done some new things like this.

These are old comic book pages from the '80s and '90s.

- [Ruth] St. Louis painter, David Ruggeri makes the most of every opportunity to engage with visitors at every venue where his works are displayed.

- Events like this I really like, I enjoy, I have stuff in galleries and things like that, which are always good too.

But here I really get to meet collectors and people that are looking around and just love art.

And we gotta have conversations with them, and that's really, really fun stuff.

I can either tape it up for you, or if you just wanna carry it like that, it doesn't matter.

- Could you actually tape it?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- [Ruth] Ruggeri's bold, colorful works, touch on themes, both whimsical and serious, drawing on influences from his youth.

- My art isn't for everybody, just like any artist.

It's not out for everyone.

So you have to find where the people who like your style, what you're trying to do, your price point, and then you have to find them and go there and then you'll be far more successful.

And it'll be more receptive to your art.

People will be far more receptive to your art, and then it will help build momentum and it will help you grow.

- David Ruggeri's works have been exhibited at art fairs and in galleries across North America.

And in March of 2022, an exhibit of six of his recent works opened here in Midtown at the Angad Arts Hotel.

The exhibit is titled "Replay."

- When I was growing up, graffiti was just starting to become a real art form.

I was moving out of the realm of vandalism to a way of expressing yourself.

And this was the internet was just starting, so images were being shared and people were starting to see different styles of work that was just on public display.

They were on overpasses, they were on buildings and people were starting to take pictures of it, share 'em, and some graffiti artists were really starting to become known as artists.

And that really was appealing to me for a lot of reasons.

Art should be available to everybody, people should be able to see it, and it's just a way of expressing yourself.

And one way people were doing it was they were going out and they were spray painting on buildings and walls.

One piece I have is the Pac-Man piece and Pac-Man again was a big part of growing up.

Video games were just starting to really evolve.

And I remember playing baseball and soccer on a Saturday afternoon.

Then we'd all go to the pizza parlor, and they'd have the Pac-Man games, and we would just be engrossed and spend times playing against each other and just kind of getting lost in that.

Another piece I have is Animal from The Muppets.

Jim Henson created this whole genre of new entertainment with the puppets and Animal was just one of the most charismatic, kind of over the top crazy drummers, and he just always had kind of a special place in my heart.

He was just so energetic, he just never stops.

He just was really the centerpiece of the band.

- [Ruth] And this work is called "Red Jordans."

It's in the wildly popular shoe brand Air Jordans, which has achieved icon status.

- Air Jordans were just coming out when I was in high school.

And back then, people really didn't collect shoes like they do now, right?

You had 'em and you used them.

I remember having a pair of the original Air Jordans, and I would cut the grass in 'em, we'd go to the lake.

And now they're worth like $25,000, but that was the first shoe that became kind of a fashion statement.

It has lived on to now that Jordans are still going strong as ever.

People are collecting 'em there's whole websites and stores just on the buying and reselling of these shoes.

- [Ruth] In his younger days, after graduating from McCluer North High School, Ruggeri spent three years in art school.

He dropped out, spent some time in Alaska, working in the commercial fishing industry, then returned home and earned two business degrees.

Several years ago, Ruggeri committed himself fully to his art, never wanting to look back with any regrets.

The decision is paying off.

Vanessa Rudloff is Arts Relations Manager for the Angad and became a fan of Ruggeri's work in 2021.

- David Ruggeri was first in our biannual exhibition, and then we got to talking and became good friends and the Replay show is a culmination of that.

- [Ruth] Rudloff selected Ruggeri's painting, "Mix Tape" for that biannual exhibition.

It was his nod to music's pre-digital, pre-streaming days.

By looking back, David Ruggeri's trajectory forward is more than promising.

- It's been a lot of fun.

It's been a fun ride and hopefully will continue.

(upbeat music) - And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us, I'm Jim Kirchherr, I will see you next time.

- [Ruth] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation, the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan Charitable Trust and by the members of Nine PBS.

(upbeat music)