*Menu
Search
Submit
Newsletters
E-Edition
Southeast Missourian
*
f/8 and Be There
Fred Lynch
Fred Lynch retired in 2018 after capturing images for the Southeast Missourian since 1975, in that time moving from black-and-white to color, from film to digital and to video. The blog title is a nod to an earlier era of news photography and the 4x5 Speed Graphic: It's more important to be there for the shot than to worry about technical details.
Recent posts
Archives

Frisco depot after 1944 flood

Posted Monday, September 6, 2010, at 7:30 AM

Southeast Missourian, May 23, 1944

This picture by G.D. Fronabarger shows the cleanup task on the west side of the Frisco passenger depot in Cape Girardeau after the recent Mississippi River flood. The street department grader is scraping mud off South Main street. From two to six inches of mud was left by the water on the two blocks of pavement between Independence and William streets.

Comments

View 9 comments or respond
Community discussion is important, and we encourage you to participate as a reader and commenter. Click here to see our Guidelines. We also encourage registered users to let us know if they see something inappropriate on our site. You can do that by clicking "Report Comment" below.

  • Looks like he has made a wooden squegee.

    -- Posted by howdydoody on Mon, Sep 6, 2010, at 9:21 AM

  • What did they do with the mud?

    -- Posted by voyager on Mon, Sep 6, 2010, at 10:57 AM

  • What happened to the depot?

    -- Posted by Cap_Anson on Mon, Sep 6, 2010, at 12:17 PM

  • Cap - looks like the depot was demolished in 1960. From http://www.semissourian.com/story/1645729.html

    -- Posted by fxpwt on Mon, Sep 6, 2010, at 4:46 PM

  • Despite the station's destruction and subsequent construction of the parking lot, passenger trains continued to run through Cape until about 1967.

    Two rail incidents from the 60's are etched in my memory of Cape Woe-Be-Gone. In Spring 1963 a TQC member hurled an open gallon of paint at a southbound passenger train on Water St leaving a orange line down the entire length of the car just before it stopped to take on/discharge passengers - not quite what Simon had in mind when he wrote, "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls...."

    A couple of years later a not so well known dummy ended his useful life on the tracks below Cape Rock, shattered by a late night freiht. This a few months before the murder/suicide of his more notorius co-worker's leap from the then new I-55 overpass.

    -- Posted by semowasp on Tue, Sep 7, 2010, at 3:25 PM

  • Hope the link works - this is a postcard showing the depot. This particular website forum has a lot of information and old pictures of the Cape Girardeau depot, other local depots, and the Frisco line in general. Looks to be many area railroad enthusiasts signed up.

    http://www.frisco.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=11244&d=1276729373

    -- Posted by fxpwt on Tue, Sep 7, 2010, at 6:23 PM

  • The razing of the Frisco passenger depot began June 28, 1960 (according to the Missourian) and Frisco passenger service through Cape ended with the southbound Sunnyland, pulled by Frisco E8 number 2020 (Big Red) in 1965.

    -- Posted by klrwhizkid on Tue, Sep 7, 2010, at 11:06 PM

  • BTW, the www.frisco.org web site is chock full of interesting stuff about Cape Girardeau. I am in the process building a model railroad, modeling the Frisco and Missouri Pacific Railroads in Cape Girardeau.

    -- Posted by klrwhizkid on Tue, Sep 7, 2010, at 11:09 PM

  • That giant broom/squegee is, I believe, a tool used to move fresh concrete around.

    -- Posted by mo_ky_fellow on Thu, Sep 16, 2010, at 9:33 PM

Respond to this blog