07/14/2026
[ Note that this is much longer than my usual posts and was written for The Daily Journal. If you don't have time to get into the whole thing, cruising the photos should fill you in on the basics! ]
Like many of you, I drive on Karsch Boulevard almost daily but it wasn’t until recently that I wondered how it got its name and imagined what life would have been like before it was built. The answer led me through the story of an influential family of shoemakers and merchants, the birth of the road itself, and the history of buildings downtown that Karsch was originally built to bypass.
The Karsch you know today is now four lanes across with a turning lane in the center that gets a little hairy sometimes. You know it by the McDonald’s golden arches, and many other fast-food places that have sprung up over the years. There are offices, gas stations, and stores of all kinds. There are stoplights at busy intersections that fork off into different areas of the town. It’s a vital roadway that connects so much and pumps a good deal of money into our community. Now picture this area, but the road is gone. No traffic, no businesses, just land and a farmhouse or two. That’s how this area looked until 1947.
Back in the day, before the current highways that we’re used to, if you were coming to Farmington from the north, you’d drive in on what we now call Flat River Road and Weber Road. U.S. Route 67 (old highway 67, as some old-timers might call it) was the sole path for all that traffic and it was only two lanes, one in each direction. The road came into Farmington city limits around where Kay Jewelers is today. It snaked in front of present-day Lowe’s and across to Taco Bell where it continued on Potosi Street, to Liberty Street, past the courthouse square, and down Ste. Genevieve Avenue. There it would intersect with Highways 00 and 32 and lead you out of Farmington toward Fredericktown and Ste. Genevieve.
When researching past gas stations in town, at first I was surprised at how many stations had been on Weber Road and packed closely together throughout downtown. It made more sense after I remembered that this was the major roadway that got in and out of town for decades. All the traffic came through downtown. This started to shift with the announcement from the State Highway Department in May of 1947 that a new 1.9-mile road would be built for Highway 67 to bypass downtown Farmington.
There were some concerns, especially from business owners on the old path who didn’t want to see their traffic decrease, and it also affected landowners along the new proposed route who had to give up a piece of their property for the new road. Even though the new pavement would only be 24 feet wide, a 200-foot-wide right-of-way was needed, allowing for a future 4 lane expansion. The new path affected 34 pieces of property. Many of these landowners settled without issue, but a few fought in court for what they considered a fairer price. Near the end of 1948, all of the rights-of-way had been settled, either by outright purchase or by condemnation, totaling $115,000, equal to 1.5 million dollars today.
Grading and paving the new road began in May 1949. The project was estimated to cost around $329,000, or 4.6 million today. The new road was completed and opened in September 1949. It was unofficially referred to as the by-pass until it was finally given a Farmington street name in January 1965 by a unanimous vote of the city council. The name Karsch Boulevard was chosen to recognize the contributions made to the area by the Karsch family since their arrival in Farmington in the 1870s, with particular recognition given to Fred M. Karsch, former city clerk and longtime community leader. The new road came through Karsch family property near Middle Street, making the name particularly fitting.
The Karsch family that ended up in Farmington was led by John Michael Karsch who was born in Germany in 1846. He came to the area as a young boy and was an apprentice shoemaker at Valley Forge by age 13. He arrived in Farmington when it was still a small village, home to only around 700 people. He bought out an existing shoe shop in town and opened The J.M. Karsch Boot and Shoe Factory in 1871.
An article from The Times in 1883 described clever ways the store would try to drum up business for their handmade boots and shoes. They would mail out flyers to cattle-raising states and the men out west would trace the outline of their feet on the back of the paper and mail it back to the store with their order. They also had been known to wrap up empty shoe boxes with fliers inside and drop them on various backroads to look like they had been bounced off of someone's buggy.
Karsch and his wife Elizabeth Zimmer, who married in 1868, had 12 children together. Three of their sons, John W., Jacob F. and William A. followed their father into the shoe trade. They officially joined the business in 1900 and the store became The J.M. Karsch Shoe Company. Their father died a year later in March 1901 at age 55. The brothers continued to run the store until it closed in 1933.
One brother, William A. Karsch, left the store in Farmington and opened The W.A. Karsch Lead Belt Shoe Store in 1906 on Main Street in Flat River. It bounced around a few different locations over the years until William retired from the shoe business in 1945. The store still carried on under his name for a time after he left.
The tradition of family business was continued by Edward F. Karsch, another of J.M.'s sons, but branched off in a different direction when Edward opened his first general store in Leadwood in 1907. This was followed by a grocery store in Potosi that he began with his son Ed Jr. in 1932 and another in Flat River in 1934. The Karsch name ended up on stores in seven towns but eventually faded out as newer chain grocers started appearing in later years. In Barnhart, Missouri, you can find one remaining Karsch family-owned grocery store called Karsch’s Village Market which is run by John Karsch, the great-grandson of J.M. Karsch who started the shoe company in Farmington so long ago.
Now I’m going to take you back to downtown Farmington so you can imagine the Karsch Shoe Store as it was, and what it looks like now and why. The next time you’re at the post office, turn around and pay attention to the row of shorter buildings across the street that Taylor Engineering and the Mayhugh law office are in. If you are of a certain age, you’ll know this is where Dugal’s used to be.
Now instead of that building, picture a pair of large two-story brick buildings. The building on the right was the shoe business with a shoe repair shop upstairs that Karsch had built in 1883. Next to it was the Klein Grocery Co. (established in 1883) that was also built by Karsch in 1892.
The grocery store was taken over in the mid-1950s by Leo Dugal, who began working for Klein’s when he was 14 years old. The name changed to Dugal’s Big Star Market and in 1960 Dugal removed the wall that separated the two brick buildings and expanded the supermarket into the old Karsch shoe store next door. A remodel in 1968 changed the look of the front exterior, turning it into one integrated storefront.
On Sept. 14, 1974, a fire was discovered late at night at the rear of Dugal’s. It spread rapidly into a massive and destructive blaze. Firefighters from surrounding cities fought for hours to keep the fire from spreading to nearby buildings, but the supermarket was lost and both historic buildings were destroyed. The Sanitary Barbershop next door was also lost, and nearby Dicus Drug suffered heavy smoke and water damage. Dugal’s was rebuilt the next year into the one-story building you still see there today.
On your next trip downtown, stop to notice the buildings and know that every one of them has a story behind it. Some have lived many different lives and have undergone transformations to adapt to a changing world. The same goes for the next time you drive down Karsch Boulevard. Take a minute to think about what Farmington looked like before it was there, and how much a single roadway can change the course of a town. Shifting a path can have large reverberations that are felt for generations. We may only know Karsch as a name on a street sign today, but it all started with a family trying to pave a way for themselves.
