Abandoned Art Playground Now Left to Rot in Missouri

If you’ve ever been to the St. Louis City Museum, you know you could spend hours there climbing, sliding, crawling through tunnels, and discovering something new around every corner. It’s wild, weird, and so much fun.

The Visionary Behind City Museum

The man behind all of that creativity was Bob Cassilly, a sculptor and artist with a one-of-a-kind imagination. Before his untimely death, Cassilly was working on another massive project, something even bigger than the City Museum. It was his dream to turn a 54-acre former cement factory into a giant public art playground.

The Dream of Cementland

He called it Cementland, fitting, right? Everything was made of steel and cement. There were bridges, towers, castles, and endless space for people to explore and climb, just like the City Museum, but on an even grander scale.

Tragic End and Controversy

But sadly, Cassilly never got to finish it. In September 2011, he was found dead after the bulldozer he was driving reportedly rolled down a hill. At first, everyone thought it was a tragic accident. But five years later, a medical expert determined that Cassilly had actually been beaten to death, and the bulldozer was staged to make it look like an accident. Why it took so long for that truth to come out, no one really knows.

His team wanted to carry on his work, but after a fire in 2014, the project was pretty much lost. Today, Cementland is closed to the public, overgrown with weeds, and filled with pieces of what could have been.

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If you’ve been to the City Museum, you’ve seen Cassilly’s creativity firsthand—every sculpture, every twist and turn tells part of his story. Cementland was supposed to be his next masterpiece, a place where imagination met adventure. Now, all that remains is an unfinished dream, sitting quietly on the edge of St. Louis, waiting for someone to bring it back to life.