The Volunteers Who Actually Run Longview Farm Park
September 10, 2026
September 10, 2026
Ask a longtime Town and Country resident where they take out-of-town guests on a Sunday afternoon and most will say Longview Farm Park without hesitating. Ask them why, and the answer usually starts with the new playground, or the horses, or the walking trail that loops past a small lake. What most people do not mention, because most people do not know, is that two of the park's defining features have nothing to do with the city's parks department. They are run entirely by volunteers, and one of them has been quietly operating on that property for more than two decades.
That distinction matters if you actually use the park, because it explains why Longview feels different from a standard suburban green space, and it points to what is coming next in a citywide project that is not finished yet.
The playground everyone talks about at Longview did not appear on its own. It was the second installment in a three-park overhaul that Town and Country's Parks and Recreation Department launched after realizing the city's original playgrounds, all roughly 20 years old, had aging pour-in-place surfacing that no longer met current standards for inclusive play. Drace Park went first. Longview Farm Park came second, with construction starting in early March and running through the following summer. Preservation Park is still next in line.
The Longview project was not a minor refresh. City figures put the cost at $594,000, with a Municipal Park Grant covering $465,000 of that total. Landesign won the construction bid. Anne Nixon, the city's director of parks and recreation, put the scale of it in context.
"Longview Farm Park is the largest and busiest park in the system."
She has also described the intent behind the redesign as a shift from merely code-compliant to genuinely inclusive, the kind of playground built with features like a flush-mount merry-go-round and ground-level play so that kids who use mobility devices and kids who do not can use the same equipment side by side. The barn, tennis court, and trails all stayed open through construction, which is part of why the disruption barely registered for regular visitors.
Preservation Park's turn has not fully arrived yet. The city's own planning page still lists a Preservation Park Playground Master Plan alongside Drace and Longview, and the last confirmed scope calls for two pickleball courts, a pump track for bikes and skateboards, and a small hillside play area backing up to the wooded trail system off North Outer Forty Road. Nixon has been direct about why pickleball made the cut: it is, in her words, "an exploding sport," and residents specifically asked for a place where adults and kids could play at the same time.
Here is the part that surprises most first-time visitors. The red barn and the horses that make Longview instantly recognizable are not a city amenity. They belong to Equine-Assisted Therapy, Inc., a nonprofit founded in 2003 by Ginni Hartke that began seeing its first clients in 2004. The organization now serves more than 150 clients a week, supported by 260 volunteers, 16 certified instructors, and a herd of 21 therapy horses. It operates in partnership with occupational and physical therapists to run therapeutic riding programs for people facing a range of physical and developmental challenges.
That means the horses grazing in the pasture along the trail are working animals with a specific mission, not a decorative touch the city added for atmosphere. When you watch them from the fence line on a weekday afternoon, you are looking at a program that has been running in that exact spot since before most of the park's other features existed.
The second volunteer-run layer of Longview is easier to miss because it does its work quietly: the gardens surrounding the historic farmhouse. They are tended by the Mason Ridge Garden Club, led by president Claire Chosid, a group of Master Gardeners who have logged more than 10,000 volunteer labor hours since 2002. That is not a typo. Two decades of unpaid horticultural work is why the beds around the farmhouse look intentional and cared for in a way that outpaces typical parks-department landscaping.
The farmhouse itself has its own history worth knowing if you ever book it for a family gathering. What stands today began as a story-and-a-half log cabin from the 1870s, later covered by a white frame house in the 1920s. The city bought the property in 2000, and after years of committee discussion, a renovation demolished the pre-1970 additions and built a new, low-profile addition in their place. The ribbon cutting for that project was September 26, 2008. The result is a gathering space with retractable walls that now hosts everything from weddings to the city's own Parks and Recreation offices.
If you are walking Longview for the first time, a few details are easy to miss on a quick pass. The main loop runs close to a mile, split between paved and unpaved sections, and it is shaded enough that regulars treat it as a summer standby rather than a spring-only destination. Along the way, small fairy gardens have been tucked at the base of several trees, a detail kids notice before adults do. There is also a small free library box on the route, the kind where you leave a book and take one.
Dogs are welcome on leash. If you bring a fishing rod, catch-and-release is permitted on the lake, but Missouri requires a valid fishing license through the Department of Conservation unless you qualify for an exemption, so check that before you go.
With fall underway, Longview's event calendar is the reason a lot of residents plan their weekends around this particular park rather than any other in the system. Three fixtures repeat every year:
Tennis lessons and children's summer camps have also become regular additions in recent seasons, filling out a schedule that used to lean almost entirely on the three headline events.
The thread connecting all of this is that Longview Farm Park works because of layers that were never part of a single master plan. The city handled the playground rebuild. Two separate volunteer organizations, one running since 2002 and the other since 2003, handle the parts that give the park its actual character. The next capital project, Preservation Park's pickleball courts and pump track, will add new activity to a different corner of the city, but it will not touch what makes Longview specifically Longview.
If you already live near Clayton Road, none of this changes your Saturday plans. It just means the next time you are watching a therapy horse graze near the fence line or noticing how sharp the flower beds look by the farmhouse, you will know exactly who to credit.
For more on what makes life in Town and Country worth paying attention to, week to week, Chris Neskar keeps a close eye on the neighborhoods she works in, not just the listings inside them.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
With decades of experience, proven negotiation skills, and a deep understanding of the St. Louis market, this professional guides clients through smooth, successful real estate journeys.