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Long Memorial Park & Tourist Camp

Behind 220 E. Central St., Springfield, MO 65802
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The Long Memorial Park Tourist Camp served travelers from 1923 to 1930. During those years it was several blocks north of the town square. It was an answer to the growing number of people traveling by car and camping wherever they could find a safe looking spot. I'm not quite sure if this was a bath house or restrooms. It is the last of several buildings that once stood on what were several city lots. Today this building is sort of hidden in the middle of a parking lot behind the old city hall and the adjacent former post office.

GPS: 37.216558,-93.291614

From the town square take Boonville north and go one block past Chestnut to Central, turn right and then turn right on Robberson (looks more like an alley). The building is in the parking lot on the west side of Robberson, look for the line of trees running west and turn right.

A local businessman named Byron Crutcher purchased this land from the John B. Waddill estate for something like $10,000 and sold it to the park board for far less. Part of the deal was that the park be named in honor of Crutcher's childhood friend Max Long who had recently passed away.

In 1922 a news story said that the new park would have a cooking pavilion and an eating pavilion. The park board would install city water and put a fence around the tract.

In the early years it was a busy place with thousands of people entering through a stone archway just east of the Post Office on Brower Street (now Chestnut Expressway). The park opened in 1923 and had 1,433 tourists park there from May 1 to July 15. In 1924 during the same time, 3.298 tourists used the Long Tourist park, according to a story in the Springfield Republican. In those two years there was no fee to use the park, but a fee was proposed to beginning in 1925.

Beginning n 1931 overnight camping was no longer allowed in the park. Instead the park was converted into a public park with a playground and in later years the land was used as an athletic field for a Springfield High School.

It wasn't until the 1960s that the Chestnut Expressway, which runs in front of the block the campground sat on, became City 66, by then the campground was long gone.

Photo(s) 2023