St. Louis County's Largest Park, Anchored by an Oxbow Lake Named for a Broken Heart
13725 Marine Avenue, Maryland Heights, MO 63146
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public-park access during posted daylight hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved multi-use trail, lakefront, and dirt sections including the Lakeview/Dripping Springs trail
Equipment
Photos OK
Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park spans 2,145 acres in Maryland Heights, Missouri, making it the largest park in the St. Louis County Parks system. The park's centerpiece is Creve Coeur Lake, an oxbow lake — a former bend of the Missouri River cut off when the main channel shifted — and one of the largest natural lakes in Missouri.
The park's French name predates American settlement. Creve Coeur means broken heart in French, and early French settlers named the area without leaving a clear record of why. The popular nineteenth-century explanation, that the lake's shape resembled a broken heart after a story of unrequited love between a French fur trader and an Indigenous woman who cast herself into the lake, is a layer of secondary folklore. Historians note that the original French settlers' reasoning has never been recovered, leaving the name's origin genuinely ambiguous between the heart-shaped lake explanation and a possible reference to a broken meander or detached river channel.
A small waterfall in the park, known as Dripping Springs or Creve Coeur Falls, is more a rocky ledge than a true waterfall and is accessed via the Lakeview Trail. A roadside sign at the falls tells the legend of the broken-hearted Indigenous woman.
Sources
The story most often attached to Creve Coeur involves an Indigenous woman, sometimes described as the daughter of a chief, whose warrior husband departed on a six-month hunting party and died on the way home. In the legend's most-told form, she climbs to the cliff overlooking the lake and casts herself off into the water below. The drops of water still falling from the cliff at the Dripping Springs site are interpreted as her tears.
The legend is well-circulated, posted on a sign at the falls, and woven into regional storytelling. We pass it on with the historians' caveat: the French place-name predates the recorded version of the story, and the early French settlers' actual reasoning for the broken-heart name was not preserved. The folklore now functions as cultural interpretation rather than recovered history. Visitors interested in Indigenous folklore in the region are encouraged to consult sources from local tribal cultural offices rather than treat the park-sign version as authoritative.
The original Shadowlands listing extends the legend with woman-figure sightings on the cliff during full moons, including an encounter in which the figure approaches a hiker of Indigenous descent and speaks in a language he cannot understand. These specific accounts circulate through community lore; we did not find formal documentation supporting them as a recurring phenomenon.
Walk or bike the 3.7-mile paved trail circling Creve Coeur Lake, or take the Lakeview Trail through the wooded section to the Dripping Springs waterfall — a small ledge-style waterfall with a roadside sign telling the broken-heart legend.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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