Lost Places Society
The public place directory
These are living local-history files: what is documented, what someone remembers, and the exact questions still waiting for the right neighbor, employee, customer or family member.
The archive now reaches across Missouri, southern Indiana, Louisville and Cincinnati. Each page stands on verified sources, then opens into a community case file where people can add firsthand memories, photographs and missing names.
Nine open files
Choose the place you know. Even one street name, menu detail, league photograph or remembered employee can move a case forward.
Missouri
Bowling lanes, a still-unidentified custard stop and a Route 66 drive-in remembered by generations.
Case 001 · Documented place
4041 Bingham Avenue · South St. Louis, Missouri
A neighborhood bowling alley remembered through family life, league nights, a basement daycare, an illuminated rooftop sign and the railroad spur beside Bingham Avenue.
Can you help? The case still needs photographs of the rooftop sign, names of employees and memories of the daycare and rail spur.
Case 002 · Identification needed
O’Fallon, Missouri
A childhood memory survives: an ice-cream or frozen-custard shop in O’Fallon served frozen custard dipped in chocolate. The business name and exact location are still unknown.
Can you help? A decade, cross street, menu, advertisement, photograph or family name may be enough to identify it.
Case 008 · Route 66 memory search
Watson Road · St. Louis County, Missouri
The Wehrenberg family’s former drive-in remains a Route 66 landmark in local memory and is represented in a 2026 National Museum of Transportation exhibit.
Can you help? The file needs opening and closing dates, ticket stubs, car-line photographs, employees and the small rituals that made a night there memorable.
Indiana and Kentucky
A river corridor of vanished recreation, hard winters, old roads and questions that cross state lines.
Case 003 · Identification needed
Spring Street · Jeffersonville, Indiana
The record begins with only a name, a Spring Street location and a submitted memory clue about “old races.” The dates, exact address, people and surviving photographs are still missing.
Can you help? Tell us what raced there, when the center operated, who ran it or what stood nearby.
Case 004 · Documented corridor
Clarksville, Indiana · private residence withheld
A vanished 1853 mill, the old bridge, two cemetery sites, seventeen nineteenth-century burials uncovered during 2017 road work, local legends and two unexplained recordings.
Our standard: records, memories, legends and unexplained evidence remain clearly separated. No recording is presented as paranormal proof.
Case 005 · Amusement park ruins
Charlestown State Park · near Charlestown, Indiana
A wooded Ohio River peninsula still holds traces of an amusement park where visitors once arrived to swim, dance, picnic, play golf and explore a small zoo.
Can you help? Family albums, ferry stories, employee names and memories of the 1937 flood could reconnect the surviving ruins with the people who knew the park.
Case 006 · Winter memory search
Louisville, Kentucky · southern Indiana riverfront
The Ohio River froze during the brutal winters of 1976–77 and 1977–78. Photographs survive, but the dates, vantage points and everyday stories behind many images do not.
Can you help? Identify a winter, bridge view, stranded towboat, frozen-pipe story or riverfront photograph from Louisville and southern Indiana.
Case 007 · Complicated public memory
Louisville’s West End · Kentucky
The rides, pool, skating and carousel belong beside the harder record of segregation, integration and the events surrounding the Fontaine Ferry name’s end in 1969.
Can you help? The file needs firsthand accounts from visitors, employees and nearby families—especially memories that preserve the full history instead of a one-line ending.
Ohio
A vanished ballpark whose neighborhood routines matter as much as the famous games.
Case 009 · Ballpark memory search
Findlay Street and Western Avenue · Cincinnati, Ohio
Redland Field opened in 1912, became Crosley Field in 1934 and hosted the Reds through June 24, 1970—including Major League Baseball’s first night game.
Can you help? The file is looking beyond box scores for ushers, vendors, neighborhood businesses, bus routes, family traditions and surviving souvenirs.
Bring us your hometown
You do not need a complete history. Start with a name, address, photograph or honest memory. Membership is free, contributions are reviewed, and your email stays private.