Sunset Hills incorporated in 1957 specifically to prevent commercial development — an early example of St. Louis County's fragmented municipal landscape, where communities incorporated to exercise zoning control over their own development pattern. The result is a community of primarily 1960s and 1970s single-family homes on wooded lots, with the creek ravines of the Gravois Creek headwaters running through the residential fabric and the Laumeier park property providing a significant woodland preserve at the community's edge.

The wooded lot character of Sunset Hills — properties backing to tree lines, ravine edges, and the creek system that drains the community toward the Meramec — creates the wildlife corridor and the tick habitat that distinguish wooded south county communities from the more open suburban landscape further out. Deer, turkey, fox, and the full suite of Missouri woodland wildlife are regular presences in Sunset Hills neighborhoods, and the tick pressure from the woodland edges warrants consistent management from April through October.

Wooded Residential Pest Profile

The combination of wooded lots, creek ravines, and the Laumeier park adjacency creates some of south county's highest tick pressure in Sunset Hills' properties along wooded edges. The white-tailed deer population that the woodland habitat supports maintains the Lone Star and black-legged tick populations that are the primary concern in wooded south county neighborhoods. Properties with lawns that transition directly to tree lines warrant professional tick barrier programs throughout the active season. The mature oak and hardwood canopy that defines the community's landscape also sustains the carpenter ant populations that those tree species support. D&D Pest Control serves south St. Louis County — visit ddpestcontrolmo.com.