Minnesota Museum of the Mississippi - Trail of Tears Memorial

Minnesota Museum of the Mississippi and other Natural Wonders

Larry Baggett's Trail of Tears Memorial - Jerome, MO

Trail of Tears Memorial

Larry Baggett was born in the small town of Hackberry, Tennessee in 1925. He worked for many years as an appliance repairman in Ohio, Tennesee and Missouri. By the 1970s he and his wife Eileen bought property along Highway D (old Route 66) just south of Jerome. They had a plan to build a commercial campground on the land, but within a few years Eileen apparently moved to Oklahoma and Larry's plans changed to building a roadside rock garden picnic spot. Someone told him his land had been along the Trail of Tears, the forced government relocation of Cherokee and other allied tribes from their homelands westward across Missouri in the harsh winter of 1838 in which many died from starvation and cold. The tragic story awakened him and he began building a memorial to commemorate that hard journey of 150 years ago.

Baggett built stone walls along the driveway leading into the property. An arch topped by an iron wagon wheel is a dramatic entry point. Going up the hillside he built terraced stone walls for garden beds topped with upright stones like teeth. Perhaps he was inspired in his stone construction by Stony Dell Resort, a tourist attraction built in 1932 by stonemason George Prewett just a third of a mile east. The resort centered around a chilly spring-fed swimming pool with decorative rock walls, a waterfall and rugged stone buildings, as well as a restaurant, store and rental cabins along the road. The resort was popular, but after Route 66 was rerouted in 1946 the business closed. The swimming pool was demolished to make way for Interstate 44 in the 1960s, while some of the stone walls of the store and the ruins of the wooden cabins can still be seen on the north side of Highway D.

Baggett worked on his rock memorial for more than two decades. He hired local children to gather river cobbles and had some help from his grown children, but did much of the construction himself. He described to visitors how he sometimes received inspiration from an old Native American man, or from mysterious knocks on his door in the middle of the night which guided him in what to add to the memorial next. Atop a hill overlooking the garden he built a stone house and round meditation building with an oversized hot tub large enough for dozens of bathers. Wearing his habitual overalls, he guided visitors around the property, explaining the astrological meaning of his rock creations and religious symbolism of the sculptures. He added several white painted concrete figures, Jesus pouring water from a pitcher and a white buffalo charging up the hill with a Native American pulling his tail. At the entrance he added a life-size concrete self portrait sitting on the wall waving at passersby.

After Baggett passed away in 2003, the site fell into disrepair. Vandals broke some of the sculptures and weeds took over the garden. In 2018, M.J. Ryberg bought the property, intending to restore it as the Trail of Tears Memorial and Herbal Gardens. A neighbor saw her working alone on the garden and offered to help. Chris "Rockman" Richardson has helped Ryberg repair the stone buildings and terraces. They repaired the portrait of Baggett which had lost his arm and fixed the water wheel to turn again. Since then, Richardson has added his own creations to the garden. A red-painted sculpture of Chief Joseph stands a bit above the garden on the side of the hill. Behind the terraces a concrete archway opens to a circle of rock walls around a seated portrait of Geronimo. Though the sculptures differ slightly from Baggett's white-painted creations, they fit in well with the style and subject of the older creations, bringing new life to the memorial as an ongoing decades-long project.

These photos were taken in spring 2021 when the gardens looked a little bare without summer greenery. The site is open on weekends.