Turtle Park

Turtle Park is a small sculpture park at the southern edge of Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri, at the intersection of Oakland and Tamm avenues. It occupies a strip of Forest Park that was cut off from the main grounds by the construction of Interstate 64. The park holds a group of oversized concrete turtles representing native Missouri species — among them a snapping turtle, a soft-shelled turtle, a red-eared slider, a Mississippi map turtle, box turtles and a stinkpot — along with seven outsized turtle eggs, three of which have hatchlings emerging, and a long sinuous snake. The figures range from about seven to forty feet in length; the snapping turtle alone used roughly 120,000 pounds of concrete. All of it was sculpted by Bob Cassilly, who would go on to found the City Museum, and the turtles are named for members of the family of Sunny Glassberg, the philanthropist who conceived and funded the park. It opened in August 1996.