JOSEPHVILLE — John Wilmes, 83, is part of the old blood of this St. Charles County village that few people know exists. His parents farmed, had lots of children and eventually parceled off pieces of land to each of them.
Wilmes and his wife, Karen, raised four children of their own on 12 acres, with some of his siblings as neighbors. There’s been plenty of rural buffer that tends to draw an occasional dreamer.
Years ago, he said, somebody wanted to build a small airport in a nearby field full of wildflowers.
“I said thanks but no thanks,†Wilmes, who taped drywall for 52 years, recalled. “Why would you want an airport in your backyard?â€
But what about a GM assembly plant?
While north ºüÀêÊÓƵ, Fenton and Hazelwood pine for the days when automobile manufacturing was king, the area just beyond the Wilmes home has been booming with that kind of activity since the 1980s, when new vehicles started coming off the line. By now, growth has caught up to tiny Josephville, which is so tight-knit that village trustees don’t even bother to officially sign up for elections.
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Josephville has a lot of residential development, but without a public water and sewer system, new houses must be built on a minimum of 3 acres to sustain septic tanks and individual water wells. The requirement has drawn an influx of well-off residents with enormous homes.
“We had our own well-kept secret around here for a long time,†Steve Kersting, 68, whose family name also runs deep, said from his small-engine repair shop. “Somebody put it on the map.â€
In neighboring Wentzville, new houses are jammed along streets like Rifle Ridge and Rabbit Run that tout, in name only, the kind of lifestyle Josephville has tried to preserve since it incorporated in 1978.
Population in the greater ºüÀêÊÓƵ metro area has been staying put around 2.8 million people, but St. Charles County, often billed as the fastest-growing county in Missouri, has been a relocation zone for many, particularly along Interstate 70 — St. Peters, O’Fallon, Lake Saint Louis. In 1950, there were 30,000 people. Today there are 400,000, with 470,000 expected by 2030.
There are notable concerns. Nearly two-thirds of workers commute to jobs outside of St. Charles County. In an for the future, the county says “[p]ressure for residential and retail development along major transportation routes has hampered efforts to preserve prime sites for enterprises that create high-paying jobs.†The plan challenges officials to address the “lack of properties of 100 acres or more†that are ready for high-tech industrial and office use.
“Unless land use planning efforts in all jurisdictions in the county can preserve larger tracts at prime locations for business and commerce, the county’s economic potential will not be realized,†county officials warn.
The St. Charles County Port Authority, which was established in 2019, passed a resolution at its last meeting that identified a large area around the GM plant, and the border of Josephville, as a desired location to foster the kind of development county leaders want. That growth would, inevitably, bring more traffic through the village.
Not to worry. Design is underway for the expansion of Josephville Road from Highway P and Kersting Road to widen the two-lane street, iron out “a couple substandard curves†and add shoulders near the heart of the village by St. Joseph Catholic Church and Josephville Meat Processing, a small business with a vending machine and picnic table out front.
The county confirmed $2.2 million is in place for the project. Construction is supposed to start in 2024.
doesn’t include the 90-degree turn in front of the Wilmes home. A crashed car from the night before rested in their driveway last week, waiting to be picked up. These days, it seems like every month somebody misses the turn.
“It’s not as peaceful as it once was,†Wilmes said.
Candidates are usually write-ins
Even with all the development near Josephville, there are still no restaurants or stoplights. There isn’t a village hall or public website. No paid employees. County records list the home address of Victoria Walker for the Board of Trustees. She didn’t come out to visit with a reporter, nor did she return calls.
Outsiders could be forgiven for wondering if anyone governs Josephville. Each year, an election is held for village trustees. The ballot is almost always empty.
When voters in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region get to the ballot box each April, there are usually a handful of municipal positions that fail to attract a candidate: aldermanic or city council seats in smaller towns like Bella Villa or Parkdale. Even the top job can be left hanging. In 2014, nobody ran for mayor in Olympian Village or in Berger.
But Josephville’s five-member board takes the cake. Three seats come up for election in odd-numbered years, and two seats in even years. Yet, year after year, no one bothers to file. Word just gets passed around.
“They do that by choice,†said Bill Luetkenhaus, 58, who served on the board years ago. “It’s worked pretty good.â€
St. Charles County doesn’t charge any fees to file as a candidate in municipal elections, but a bit of paperwork is required. The most important is a notarized affidavit in which candidates affirm they aren’t delinquent in paying taxes. Instead, voters here are accustomed to just writing in their preferred choices, a practice that seems to have begun as soon as Josephville was incorporated. The village was even tinier then — just 58 residents were recorded in the 1980 decennial census.
The first time a candidate’s name appeared on the ballot for Josephville trustee was April 1982. Thomas A. Wilmes’ formal entry that spring made enough of a splash that the St. Charles Post wrote a story about it. A search of newspaper clippings found only four other trustee candidates have ever registered, and three of those were in 1995. Since then, Josephville’s population has grown, rising from 270 in 2000 to 512 in 2020, but write-ins still win trustee seats with as few as 5 votes.
The 2021 election hit a snag. Roger Orf won the first of three seats with 20 votes. There was a three-way tie for the remaining two seats: Roger Housel, Luke Kersting, and Jamie Meyer each received 10 votes. Housel said in an interview that they agreed to resolve the tie by drawing names. He lost, but in early April, voters wrote his name in again and he won a seat.
“I like to get involved just to know what’s going on,†said Housel, 58. “There are some big developments coming that I am pretty sure most of the people in town and around here don’t know about.â€
Housel, part of the new blood, moved here a few years ago from the Dallas area.
“I really like it,†he said. “It’s nice and quiet.â€
He wants it to stay that way.
“Josephville is trying to keep from being taken over,†he said. “We would like to grow our boundaries more to maintain our rural feel.â€
He said village trustees meet once a month at St. Joseph Catholic Church. At his first meeting last month, the board weighed a proposal to add a trailer to the church school to provide more classroom space.
Housel said village records aren’t electronic but they may start drafting a newsletter so residents can be more informed.
Also at its last meeting, the county port authority passed a resolution to help create an Advanced Industrial Manufacturing Zone near the GM plant by Josephville.
“We would like to see more jobs, opportunities for employment,†Roger Ellis, port authority chairman, said by telephone.
Country living, minutes from the city
Greg Buerck, 56, migrated from north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County to St. Charles County. He resettled in St. Peters.
“I don’t like that you can spit at these houses and hit it,†he said.
While he’s prospered from development by building retaining walls, patios and driveways, he enjoys having a lot of space for his home office and equipment yard right next to Josephville.
“You feel like you are in the country and you are only minutes from the city,†he said.
To Josephville native Marsha Kiel, it feels closer.
“The city is moving all around us,†said Kiel, 59.
A long time ago, she said her father used a workhorse, piano and some money for a down payment on 90 acres in the area. One of six children, she lives on a cut of the acreage in the 1300 block of Kiel Lane. A small farmhouse, where she lived as a baby, stands beside a bigger home, built in the 1960s, where she now lives with her daughter, Brittany Kiel-Mahoney.
“I am like a bitter old guy,†Kiel-Mahoney, 32, said with a smile. “I constantly live in what was.â€
Behind them, McMansions on 3-acre lots fill up Barton Creek subdivision where Kiel-Mahoney used to take long walks to her aunt’s house. She still does, through her imagination.
“In my brain, when I look out there, it’s still all fields,†she said.