Close to 30 years ago, Kim Henderson was working as an officer in a Windsor bank near Casey’s. When she looked out the window, she could see bicyclists pass by on the KATY Trail.
There was the possibility of a spur line of the rails-to-trail bicycle trail from Pleasant Hill that would cross the KATY Trail at Windsor.
In 2016, that spur trail, 47.5 miles connecting Pleasant Hill to Windsor, became a reality. On June 30, the Rock Island Spur, plus 144 miles from Windsor to Beaufort, became Missouri’s 93rd state park.
The dedication of the Rock Island Trail State Park took place on the northeast end of Windsor, near the high school, where the KATY Trail bridge crosses over the Rock Island Trail. The ceremony and unveiling of the sign featured speeches by state park officials, DNR directors and Kim, who is vice president of the Friends of the Rock Island Trail group.
“This has only come about with the team work of many, many people,” Kim said of the state park’s creation.
Kim is not a cyclist, she said, but has been on board as a rails-to-trails supporter since she watched the railroad ties being taken up to create the KATY Trail. The 240-mile long KATY Trail, also a state park, is the longest continuous rails-to-trail in the country. Windsor is its highest point.
It was nine years ago, in 2014, that Kim bought three lots on Cherry Street, east of Casey’s, in anticipation of the Rock Island Trail coming to Windsor. The next year, she moved a small cabin to the property and has since had three more cabins built and moved there.
“When I put the fourth cabin down, I quit my job,” Kim said. “This has been my full-time job since 2018.”
Cyclists who book the cabins every year include a group that come from Texas for a week and use Windsor as a base for cycling. Her cabins also draw people who visit Windsor for family reunions and weddings, to go hunting, to explore Amish country or just for a getaway.
Windsor has two event venues — The Moment and Evelyn Valley Ranch, Kim said, which bring visitors to town, benefiting restaurants, gas stations, and conveninence and grocery stores.
“The lodging capacity in town used to be 17,” she said. “Now it’s 75.”
Kim delivers what visitors want: clean cabins, each with a full kitchen, a sitting area, and bathroom with a shower and bathtub, served by a 40-gallon hot-water tank. The original cabin is smaller, but the three new cabins each have two queen beds, a queen sofa bed and a roll-way bed can be added, Kim said, so can sleep up to seven people. Prices start below $100 for two people per night.
Each cabin also has a front porch with chairs, and a patio table and chairs in the quiet, shady yard surrounding each log structure.
“I’m in the process of adding permanent fire pits,” Kim said.
The Rock Island Trail State Park is a work in progress — it will eventually extend across mid-Missouri for what planners call the “next 144 miles.” Spanning mid-Missouri, the Rock Island Trail will connect to the KATY Trail at the Dutzow trail head to form a 450-mile loop.
Some towns along the Rock Island Trail have already received grants to build the trail to state park standards, Kim said. The Rock Island Trail will go through Ionia and near Cole Camp in Benton County, through Stover, Versailles and Barnett in Morgan County, Eldon in Miller County and five more counties to the town of Beaufort, south of Washington and the Missouri River.
The Rock Island Trail used to be a line of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, known as the Rock Island Line. The corridor connects more than 20 historic railroad towns, goes through three train tunnels and crosses bridges spanning three rivers —the Osage, Gasconade and Maries —plus Soap Creek. Plans call for the trail to connect to Union and then turn north.
On the west end, the new Rock Island Trail State Park goes from Windsor to Pleasant Hill. There is one unfinished section between Pleasant Hill and Lees Summit, Kim said, called the Greenwood Gap, but from Lee’s Summit, there is a paved trail put in by Jackson County that goes to the Kansas City sports stadiums.
“We’ve been dreaming about this for almost 20 years,” Kim said of a trail connecting the St. Louis area with Kansas City.
Kim is from St. Charles, Mo. at the other end of the KATY Trail. She loves that she can tell people she grew up close to the train tracks that became the KATY Trail, and now owns property a block away from where the KATY Trail passes. Kim’s cabins are less than a quarter of a mile from where the KATY Trail bridge crosses over the Rock Island Trail.
Kim, whose maiden name is Aufner, said her “lodging roots” go back to her German great-grandparents, who had a gasthaus near Frankfort. She worked at a resort in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and also lived in Europe. Kim said she has lived in Windsor for 35 years, when she and her family moved back to Missouri to be near her mother.
Her two sons live in Windsor — one is an apprentice lineman and the other just bought the liquor store in town. After working at the bank, Kim was the Windsor city administrator for four years. In addition to her main job running the cabins, Kim said she has a side job helping her long-time partner working his herd of cattle.
The cabin business keeps her tied to Windsor, but when she travels, she visits other businesses that serve people who ride the KATY and Rock Island trails. She doesn’t consider them competition, she said, but part of the team that serves visitors.
“We’re all in this together,” she said.
This is Kim’s ninth season offering hospitality in Windsor, which with the creation of Rock Island Trail State Park, is gaining prominence as the “Crossroads of the KATY and Rock Island Trails.”
For more information about the Rock Island Trail State Park, go to rockislandtrail.org or facebook.com/morockislandtrail. To contact Kim’s Cabins, call 660-351-0905.
