All Family Fun

Baetje Farms Just across from Chateau Ste. Genevieve winery on Jackson School Road in Bloomsdale, Baetje Farms has established itself as one of Ste. Genevieve County’s most remarkable agricultural success stories—a comprehensive agritourism destination where award-winning artisan cheese production, immersive farm experiences, and elegant event hosting come together to create something truly special. Important: Baetje Farms is a working farm. Tours and tastings require advance booking by phone. Do not show up without calling ahead to schedule your visit. Founded by Steve and Veronica Baetje and now operated by the Clement family (who also owns The Kozy and Dew Drop Inn), this is not just a farm that happens to make cheese—it’s a world-class artisan operation where white Saanen goats graze on-site, provide milk, and become central to an immersive experience understanding how exceptional cheese begins with happy, healthy animals producing the best possible milk. The award-winning cheeses—Bloomsdale (Super Gold World Cheese Awards winner inspired by Valencay), Miette (“small, sweet thing,” their most awarded honeymoon cheese), Coeur de la Crème, Vallée, and Amoureux—aren’t “good for a local product”; they’re legitimately world-class, standing alongside finest artisan products from anywhere in the world. One delighted visitor testified: “The tour was absolutely incredible—seeing Read more…

Centre for French Colonial Life At the corner of 2nd and Market Streets, where Ste. Genevieve’s Historic District pulses with the accumulated stories of generations, stands an institution devoted to making the invisible visible: the Centre for French Colonial Life. This modern facility serves as gateway to something increasingly rare in America—authentic, tangible connection to a multicultural past where French colonists, Spanish administrators, African Americans both enslaved and free, Native peoples, and eventually Anglo-Americans negotiated their shared existence within a Mississippi River Valley crossroads. Beginning Your Journey The Centre exists precisely for this moment: to prepare your eyes and mind before stepping into historic homes, to provide context transforming old buildings into living narrative, to answer the questions that emerge when you stand within spaces where real people made real lives. Thoughtfully curated changing exhibits provide depth. A well-stocked gift shop offers books and items extending your understanding beyond these walls. Friendly staff help you navigate not just the Centre but the entire museum campus—orienting you toward questions you didn’t know you carried, connecting you to stories your family might inhabit. Here, you’ll purchase tickets for guided tours through the Bolduc and LeMeilleur Houses. Here, you’ll learn about programs and Read more…

Pinkley Park: Remembering One of Our Own On La Haye Street in the quiet residential neighborhood just north of downtown, five acres of open space bear the name of a man who spent decades serving Ste. Genevieve without fanfare—Dave Pinkley, “Big Guy” to those who knew him, a city employee whose quiet dedication to work and community translated into infrastructure that others built upon, into problems solved without self-promotion, into the kind of presence that becomes irreplaceable only after sudden absence makes clear what was always there. When Dave died suddenly on January 13, 2017—a heart attack claimed him after a shift during harsh winter weather, at fifty-six—the city recognized that some people deserve more than memory contained within individual hearts. They deserve a place. A space where neighbors gather, where children play, where the community continues what Dave embodied: showing up, contributing, caring for shared spaces. The Park: Simple Dignity, Genuine Welcome Pinkley Park covers roughly five acres with a straightforward philosophy: amenities serving actual neighborhood needs. Gravel parking allows easy access. A basketball court invites athletic engagement. A picnic area welcomes gathering. Playground equipment—distinctive tropical tiki-hut design featuring paired slides, a bridge, climbing ropes, and sliding tubes—came from Read more…

Fort de Chartres State Historic Site Stone Testament to French Imperial Ambition Four miles west of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, where the American Bottom widens toward the Mississippi River, stands a partially reconstructed stone fort that once embodied French imperial authority across the Illinois Country—Fort de Chartres, named for the infant son of the French regent, erected in the 1750s as the seat of French government and chief military installation in Upper Louisiana. The massive stone structure, built after two successive wooden forts proved inadequate to French ambitions, served for barely a decade before the Treaty of Paris (1763) ceded French territories to Britain, before British occupation itself ended in abandonment, before the river whose presence justified the fort’s location began its patient erosion—collapsing the south wall in 1772 and leaving only ruins to mark where colonial power had been concentrated and then forgotten. Today, within the reconstructed fort walls and the grounds of Fort de Chartres State Historic Site, the powder magazine stands—that original 1750s stone structure widely considered the oldest building in Illinois—proof that some things endure even when empires don’t. The Three Forts: Ambition’s Evolution The story of Fort de Chartres encompasses three distinct structures reflecting French Read more…

Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site Near Ellis Grove, Illinois, where the Kaskaskia River meets the Mississippi in a confluence of currents and history, a 200-acre bluff overlooks a landscape that tells a story of grandeur surrendered to nature’s patient theft. Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site preserves earthen remains—ramparts in rough square formation with bastions at corners—of a small French fort built around 1759 to defend a town that had become, by then, the principal commercial center of the Illinois Country. Yet the river that once made Kaskaskia valuable through commerce eventually made it expendable through erosion: the original town of Old Kaskaskia, thriving on river-rich bottomland, occupied an island that the Mississippi gradually claimed until, by the 1880s-1890s, it was gone—washed away, leaving only memory and earthen traces on a bluff overlooking what had been taken. The Town: From Jesuit Mission to Colonial Capital Kaskaskia begins not as fort but as faith. Jesuit missionaries established a mission at the mouth of the Kaskaskia River in 1703, choosing location for access to the Illinois Confederation peoples whose lands, hunted and farmed for generations, offered spiritual opportunity. Shortly after, French settlers from Quebec and Louisiana began trickling toward the rich, alluvial farmland Read more…