Nine days ago, twenty-person crews paddled the 300-meter course at Sailboat Cove three times each, the food trucks packed up by early afternoon, and Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park went back to being the place residents pass through on a Tuesday evening jog. That's the pattern every August: one loud Saturday, then quiet again. But the thing that will actually change how you use this park for the rest of the year didn't show up for a single day and leave. It's been growing on the west side of Mallard Lake, and it's still there right now.
If you've walked the loop for years, you already know the rhythm. The big lake gets the attention, the small one is the stretch you pass through to finish your lap. That's starting to shift, and it's worth knowing why before your next walk.
One Saturday in August
The Gateway Dragon Boat Festival hit its 20th year on August 15, held as always in the Sailboat Cove section of the park. The format hasn't changed much in two decades: teams of 20 paddlers race the same 300-meter course three times over the course of the morning and early afternoon, spectators watch for free, and food trucks and a kids' zone fill in the gaps between heats. What has changed is the ritual around it. In 2025, organizers added an eye-dotting ceremony before the boats hit the water, a tradition meant to awaken the dragon's spirit before racing, and it's since become part of how the day opens. Proceeds go to Operation Family Help, which assists local families facing medical costs outside their insurance coverage, so the festival has quietly become one of the more meaningful fundraising days on the West County calendar even though most of the county just knows it as "the boat thing at the lake."
For one Saturday, Sailboat Cove is the busiest corner of the park. Parking fills, the paved loop gets crowded near the cove, and if you're a regular who just wants a normal walk, you plan around it or you don't go that day.
What Doesn't Pack Up When the Trucks Leave
Mallard Lake is the smaller of the park's two bodies of water, 66 acres against the main lake's 320, built as part of the Route 364 bridge project that connected St. Louis County to St. Charles County when it wrapped up in December 2003. For most of its life, Mallard Lake has been the part of the walk you do without really looking at, the stretch between the bridge crossing and the return leg of the loop.
That's changing because of what's now planted along its west side. Forest ReLeaf, the nonprofit that runs a community tree nursery adjacent to the park off Creve Coeur Mill Road, has built out a labeled collection of more than 100 tree species there, enough to earn ArbNet Level II arboretum accreditation, a designation that requires a documented collection plan, public education programming, and paid staff managing it rather than a scattering of donated saplings. Recent park visitors have started noticing it as a distinct destination in its own right, not just scenery on the way to somewhere else.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. A labeled, managed tree collection gives people a reason to stop walking and start reading, which is a different kind of use than a loop designed for forward motion. The west side of Mallard Lake used to be the part of the walk nobody lingered on. Now it's the part some people are walking to specifically.
| Creve Coeur Lake | Mallard Lake | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 320 acres | 66 acres |
| Origin | Natural oxbow lake, park dedicated 1945 | Built with the 2003 bridge project |
| Historic role | Regattas, boating events, the 1904 Olympic sculling competition | Overflow water, a stretch you pass through |
| What's new | Hosts the annual dragon boat festival at Sailboat Cove | Now home to a 100-plus-species Level II arboretum |
The Long Way Around Just Got Longer
The paved loop around Creve Coeur Lake runs close to 3.8 miles, mostly flat, wide enough for walkers, joggers, and cyclists to share without much friction. What a lot of regulars haven't clocked is where it actually goes once it leaves the lake. The trail feeds into the Fee Fee Trail, part of the Great Rivers Greenway network, and a separate lane built onto the Route 364 bridge carries the connection across the Missouri River all the way to the Katy Trail.
That means the loop you've been treating as a closed circuit is, and has been since 2003, a junction. You can walk your normal lap and turn around at the bridge like always, or you can keep going and end up on one of the longest rail-trail systems in the country without ever getting in a car. Most people don't, because the habit of the loop is strong. But the option has been sitting there the whole time, and the new arboretum gives the far side of that junction, the Mallard Lake side, an actual reason to slow down before you decide which way to go.
Here's one way to use both changes on the same walk:
- Start at the Marine Avenue lot and take the loop counterclockwise toward Sailboat Cove.
- Cross near the Route 364 bridge and follow the trail onto the Mallard Lake side.
- Slow down along the west shore where the arboretum's labeled trees begin. Most aren't fenced off. You can read the tags as you go.
- Continue to the Fee Fee Trail junction. Turn back for the standard loop, or keep going if you've got the legs for a longer stretch toward the Katy Trail.
- Finish back at Marine Avenue, or exit near Creve Coeur Mill Road if you parked closer to the nursery side.
Where the Walk Ends Now
Creve Coeur's restaurant scene has moved fast this year, and a couple of the newer spots sit close enough to the park to make a natural finish line. The Mexican Barrel House opened in February at 1085 N. Mason, in the former Houlihan's space, run by Alfredo Flores, whose family also operates Casa Juarez and the Las Fuentes restaurants. It's a big room, 280 seats, with a menu that mixes Mexican standards, Tex-Mex barbecue, and an American breakfast service. A few miles over on Olive, Oh London opened in June inside the old Reserve Restaurant and Lounge space, from the same team behind Black Salt, whose second location landed in Creve Coeur back in January after the original opened in Chesterfield in 2023.
None of that changes what happens inside the park boundary, but it's part of the same pattern. Creve Coeur isn't sitting still this year, on the water or off it.
The Same Lake, Read Differently
The dragon boats will be back next August, loud and welcome and over by early afternoon. The arboretum won't be. It's a slower kind of change, the kind that doesn't show up on a single Saturday but reshapes which half of the loop you actually want to walk. If you've been finishing your lap without a second look at the Mallard Lake side, this is the year that stops making sense.
Nika Leoni works with buyers and sellers across Creve Coeur and the rest of West St. Louis County, and pays attention to the same details that make a neighborhood worth walking, not just worth listing. If you're thinking about what's next for your own address here, schedule a private consultation whenever you're ready.
