Stairwells to nowhere still line the bank of the Meramec River near Marshall Road in Kirkwood. They are the last remnants of what was once a weekend getaway for St. Louisans seeking refuge from the summer heat.

Although the clubhouses and cabins that used to sit on the river near Marshall Road are gone, their remains and contents are still scattered throughout the Meramec after neglect and erosion washed them away.

That's where Operation Clean Stream comes in. A project run by the Open Space Council, the annual cleanup of the Meramec has become quite an event at spots up and down a 100-mile stretch of the river. And over the years, it has put a sizable dent in the debris that once littered the Meramec watershed.

"The bank was a backyard landfill," said Ron Coleman, executive director of the Open Space Council. "Now it's a backyard playground for the public."

Since it started in 1967 (back when it was still billed as a river cleanup and beer party by the fledgling environmental movement), Operation Clean Stream has removed thousands of club houses that had fallen into the river, Coleman said. Old cars that were buried to stabilize the banks have since resurfaced, and many of those have been removed, too. But some, as well as plenty of other relics of the past, remain.

Coleman estimates that the effort draws about 2,000 volunteers each year. Despite the high water levels, which probably obscured some debris, those who came Saturday were still able to pull plenty of trash out of the Meramec: bed frames, toilets, tires, a washing machine, a Barbie doll, a lawnmower and even a Polaroid camera.

"A lot of this stuff dates 50, 60 years back," Coleman said as he and other volunteers cruised upriver, searching the banks for trash that could be hauled away.

And the event keeps bringing many volunteers back. This year was David Clardy's first time participating as a civilian, he said. The last 15 years he volunteered with the Missouri National Guard, 220th Engineer Company.

The 220th began volunteering after the Open Space Council asked them for help removing a submerged school bus.

But a bus isn't even the craziest thing Clardy has helped get out of the river. One year, volunteers unwittingly brought back a meth lab, he said.

"I was more worried about the people having it in their boat and having it blow up or something," he said. "They didn't know what they were getting into."

Despite the visible improvements over the years, the Meramec is still on the state's list of impaired streams.

The Department of Natural Resources is preparing regulations that could limit the amount of storm water runoff allowed into it.

"We still have this invisible culprit in the water," Coleman said of chemical pollutants.

But the river is no longer the "disaster" it used to be, Coleman said, and the volunteers all seemed to be enjoying themselves in the unusually cool August weather.

Plus, you never know what you might find, he said, recalling the year he and others pulled four safes from under the Missouri Highway 21 bridge.

"We thought we found endless funding," Coleman said.

"Unfortunately, the loot was gone."