Fenton: Where the Chrysler Plant Defined a Saint Louis Suburb

Fenton sits in the Meramec River valley southwest of Saint Louis, where Route Sixty-Six once followed the river corridor through the beginning of the Ozark foothills. The town's modern identity was shaped largely by the Chrysler assembly plant that operated here for decades, producing minivans and other vehicles and employing thousands of workers from the Saint Louis metropolitan area.

The plant opened in nineteen fifty-nine and represented the postwar wave of auto manufacturing expansion into the suburban ring around major cities. When Chrysler closed its Fenton plants in two thousand eight and two thousand nine during the company's bankruptcy, it left a significant gap in the local economy and a massive industrial site along the Meramec. The Route Sixty-Six alignment through Fenton is still traceable, though the highway's character here is now suburban commercial rather than motor-court corridor, swallowed by the growth of the Saint Louis suburbs in the postwar decades the highway itself helped accelerate.