This timeline was printed for the Sept 28, 2024 opening event, but without the source references due to lack of space.
So we are publishing here with a few more details and the sources.
As far back as 12,000 BC - The region supports people and mastodons. Human-crafted spear points and mastodon bones, proven to date from the same epoch, have been discovered in neighboring Jefferson County, Missouri.
Source
1. Missouri State Parks, “Historic Site History at Mastodon State Historic Site,” accessed September 24, 2024, https://mostateparks.com/page/54983/historic-site-history.
2. Historic City of Jefferson, “Traces of Ancient Indian Cultures in Mid-Missouri Abundant,” News Tribune, September 3, 2022, https://www.newstribune.com/news/2022/sep/03/traces-of-ancient-indian-cultures-in-mid-missouri/.
3. National Register of Historic Places. “Missouri - Jefferson County: Kimmswick Bone Bed,” Accessed September 24, 2024. https://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/MO/Jefferson/state.html.
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As far back as 12,000 BC People mine high-quality flint in the Crescent Hills. An estimated 6,000 - 10,000 quarries can be found in an area that includes large sections of Tyson. Flint was used for tools, weapons, and as a medium of exchange.
Source
1. National Register of Historic Places. “Missouri - Jefferson County: Beaumont-Tyson Quarry District,” Accessed September 24, 2024. https://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/MO/Jefferson/state.html.
2. Conor Watkins, “The Tyson Valley—Where Elk and Buffalo Roam,” in Conor Watkins' Ozark Mountain Experience: Article 25-27 Combined (2006), accessed September 24, 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20060821092728/http://www.rollanet.org/~conorw/cwome/article25,26,&27combined.htm.
3. Tyson Research Center, “History of Tyson,” accessed September 24, 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20080308184720/http://www.biology.wustl.edu/tyson/history.html.
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1800s - Settlers arrive seeking resources. They establish farms and harvest white oak timber from the area. Much of the lumber is sent to a nearby plant that produces wooden barrels.
Source
1. Tyson Research Center, “History of Tyson.”
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1877 - 1927 An industrial limestone mine is founded at Tyson. Workers live in the adjacent company town, and trains serve the settlement at Tyson Station. [Many buildings in early Saint Louis stood on limestone foundations. The Kimmswick limestone from Tyson was also ideal for making lime, an ingredient in mortar and cement. The foundations of large lime kilns, as well a cavern hollowed by mining, still exist on site.]
Source
1. Watkins, “The Tyson Valley.”
2. Tyson Research Center, “History of Tyson.”
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1941 In the leadup to WWII, the U.S. government constructs the Tyson Valley Powder Farm, a 2,600-acre military base for storing and testing weapons. [The US government acquires the land using eminent domain.] Soldiers build 52 concrete munitions bunkers, 21 miles of roads, and a perimeter fence. They monitor the perimeter on machine-gun-mounted jeeps and on mule-back.
Source
1. Watkins, “The Tyson Valley.”
2. Tyson Research Center, “History of Tyson.”
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February 13, 1946 - July 1, 1948 As many as five bunkers — “Igloos 48, 49, 50, 51, 52” — are used by the Atomic Energy Commission to store radioactive byproducts and scrap known as “biscuits” from uranium processing conducted at Mallinckrodt Chemical Company in St. Louis. St. Louis scientists and workers refined uranium for the Manhattan Project during WWII, and waste was created from this process.*
Source
1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SEC Petition Evaluation Report: Petition SEC-00115: Tyson Valley Powder Farm (TVPF), Report Rev. No. 1, March 2, 2009, 13-14, https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/sec/tysonv/tvpfer-115-r1.pdf.
2. Wall Street Journal, “Tyson Valley Powder Farm, St. Louis, MO,” in Waste Lands: America’s Forgotten Nuclear Legacy, last updated October 29, 2013, https://www.wsj.com/graphics/waste-lands/site/476-tyson-valley-powder-farm/.
3. Carolyn Bower, Louis J. Rose, and Theresa Tighe, “Rediscovering Four Forgotten Sites…Government Lost Track of Nuclear Operations Here and Nationwide,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 17, 1989, accessed September 24, 2024, https://www.atomichomefront.film/docs/SLPD-Legacy-of-the-Bomb-February-1989.pdf.
*Important note! There is no evidence of remaining radiation in Tyson structures. To cite just one report from 1989, “[Washington] university radiation specialists…tested all remaining structures…No elevated readings were found” [Bower]
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1947 - 1951 With the war over, St. Louis County buys the land and creates Tyson Valley Park. They establish a wildlife refuge, importing ten buffalo from Oklahoma, twenty elk from Yellowstone National Park, and fifteen white-tailed deer donated by August A. Busch.
Source
1. Watkins, “The Tyson Valley.”
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1949 - St. Louis County leases six of the concrete explosives bunkers to a commercial mushroom farm.
Source
1. Watkins, “The Tyson Valley.”
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1951 - 1953 The US government reacquires the land, this time to support the Korean War. As during WWII, Tyson is used to store and test ammunition. New large warehouses are built where trucks are deconstructed and shipped to Korea.
Source
1. Tyson Research Center, “History of Tyson.”
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1953 - 1963 Corn and wheat is stored as agricultural surplus in decommissioned Korean War buildings. Quail proliferate: they enjoy abundant food when the grain storage buildings are opened for air circulation.
Source
1. Tyson Research Center, “History of Tyson.”
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October 9, 1958 - March 2, 1959 The imported elk herd has grown. After a bull elk rams into truck, the herd is declared dangerous. In addition, the elk are expensive to feed. Penned in by the perimeter fence, many elk can’t find sufficient food. A decision is taken to eliminate the herd. 103 elk are shot and killed. The meat is donated to local food pantries.
Source
1. Watkins, “The Tyson Valley.”
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1963 WashU acquires the land, establishing the Tyson Research Center we know today. Tyson researchers amass a body of work on environmental topics ranging from the “Enhancement of severe weather by the St. Louis urban-industrial complex” to “The beaver tail” to “The munitions storage bunker as a man-made hibernaculum for bats.”
Source
1. Tyson Research Center, “Publications 1963-2003,” accessed September 24, 2024, https://tyson.wustl.edu/pre-2004-pubs.
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1963 - 1964 At the same time, St. Louis County re-acquires 405 acres and re-establishes a park. Park workers notice elk tracks, and finally, they spot a 7-foot bull elk who survived the extermination (perhaps he was so young that he was mistaken for a deer at the time). Park workers leave an opening in the fence they are building for this Lone Elk survivor. Once he passes from WashU to County property, Lone Elk Park is renamed in his honor, and new herd-mates are imported.
Source
(for 6 years vs 10)
1. Powers, Shelley. "Tyson Valley, a Lone Elk, and the Bomb." Burning Bird. December 28, 2004. https://burningbird.net/tyson-valley-lone-elk-bomb/.
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2001 - 100,000 baby teeth are discovered while cleaning a Tyson ammunition bunker. The teeth, originally donated to the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey (1959-1970), were moved to Tyson at an unknown date. The survey, organized by the St. Louis Citizens' Committee for Nuclear Information, found that “radioactive strontium-90 levels in the baby teeth of children born from 1945 to 1965 had risen 100-fold and that the level…rose and fell in correlation with atomic bomb tests.”
Source
1. Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Dental Medicine, “St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey, 1959-1970,” accessed September 24, 2024, https://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/dental/articles/babytooth.html.
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Present day - Research continues on this altered land.
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Timeline by Marlo Longley
September 2024