An imposing new sign telling drivers on Missouri Highway 96 they are driving by Kellogg Lake Park will be installed as soon as the park committee and the city decide where to put it.
Kellogg Lake Park Committee members Jim Crocker and Jo Ellis told the Carthage City Council Public Services Committee that Carthage Marble has donated a 6,000-pound slab of granite to the park committee to use to make a sign.
“This slab of granite is about five feet tall and nine feet long and four to six inches thick,” Crocker said. “What we propose to do, Carthage Marble proposes to donate this piece of stone to us and in turn to the city, and we’ve talked to Pat Snyder at West Chestnut Monument, and one side is about as flat as a cinder block wall and we propose, and we don’t have the exact wording yet, to put something like Kellogg Lake Park on Historic Route 66, established in 1953 and maybe the five founding members of the Carthage Sportsmens League.
“We propose to set that stone on the north side of the lake between the lake and Missouri 96.”
Crocker said he hopes to put lettering on both sides of the stone. He said the other side of the stone has a rough surface and anything on rough side of the stone would have to be mounted metal letters instead of engraved into the stone.
“One side of the stone is flat enough to be engraved, which Pat has said he will do for us,” Crocker said. “This slab of stone weighs about 6,000 pounds and he’s prepared to help us move it engrave it and set it, what ever we decide to do with it.”
Crocker and the committee members discussed for several minutes the different places the sign might be located.
Crocker and Ellis said they would prefer to put it close to Missouri 96 but they said they know they would have to make sure it is not in the state’s right of way.
Parks Department Director Alan Bull said there isn’t very much room between the road that goes around Kellogg Lake and the state’s right of way on Missouri 96.
Members of the Public Works Committee instructed Bull to meet with the Kellogg Lake committee to decide where the sign could be placed.
“We’d eventually like to run lighting to it, maybe not initially, and that might be the only cost to the city,” Crocker said. “We have the rock, we have the donation or lower cost from Pat to get it engraved. We think it will be a very attractive sign, there are numerous people coming through on Route 66 who will see it.”
