Meramec Cave – early tourism

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Oct 012024
 

              Real photo postcard. Entrance to Meramec Cave in Stanton, Missouri. Probably 1930s

Caves have been inhabited and served as the stage for mythological tales in most cultures, past and present. Indigenous peoples used Missouri’s numerous caves for shelter long before Europeans arrived. For a century and a half after that, it was mined for saltpeter (potassium nitrate, which is used in the manufacture of fireworks, fluxes, gunpowder, etc.), and was even named “Saltpeter Cave.” By the time this photo was taken Meramec Cave had a well-known history.

After the Civil War, local residents found more genial uses for the cavernous space like celebrations, music events, and “cave parties.” In 1933, Lester Dill bought the cave and turned his marketing talents to its promotion. His billboards still dot our highways. But more significant to the evolution of tourism, Les is credited with the invention of the bumper sticker. While visitors toured the cave, Dill sent “bumper sign boys” into the parking lot to tie (no stick-‘em or glue those days) Meramec Caverns bumper signs on their cars. He got free advertising; visitors had another souvenir.

The Corps of Engineers had ambitious plans for the Meramec River and its surrounding landscape:

“A fifty-one-page booklet published in 1966 by the University of Missouri Extension Division summarized the master plan the Corps and other state and federal groups had to take over the entire Meramec basin.

In 1949, they undertook an ambitious planning process to build three reservoirs in the Meramec basin. They invited fourteen other state and federal agencies to participate in a grandiose improve­ment scheme. By 1965, they proposed thirty-one reservoirs, small, medium, and large, that would transform the region into a land of lakes and a motorboat paradise.”

Lawsuits were filed. The public was alerted:

“Don Rembach and Roger Pryor and other cavers and geologists brought out the fact the dam was not only built on a fault, it was in such a karst area it might not hold water. Mr. St. Louis Zoo and national TV star, Marlon Perkins, made a short film of floating the beautiful Meramec that was shown in movie theaters in St. Louis. Folk singer Tom Shipley wrote a protest song:

Well the generals laugh and the generals gloat /
but the people of Missouri, well they never got a vote /
they’re putting up a dam and we’re putting up a fight /
on the banks of the Meramec.”

Quoted from Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir.

The original postcard is now in the Payton Ozarks Collection of the Ozarks Studies Institute at Missouri State University.

CAUGHT AT OSCEOLA MO – Spoonbill / Paddlefish

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Mar 042023
 

Paddlefish grow big and photogenic. This late real photo postcard was not mailed, so there’s no postmark—possibly 1950s?

On the back of the low-contrast, rather unfocused postcard is a discussion of the edibility of the “spoonbill catfish,” written in blue ballpoint: “Most people eat them and say they are as good as any other fish—but some say they aren’t fit to eat and give them away. We never eat any so don’t know.” The writer explained, “the bill is about the size of a boat paddle.”

In fact, the more common name for these large plankton filter feeders is paddlefish. Their flesh is quite good, and their eggs are a decent substitute for caviar from sturgeon. In Missouri it’s illegal to transport or sell paddlefish eggs, however. Regulations vary from state to state. There is a legal commercial fishery for paddlefish on the Mississippi River.

Once a low hydroelectric dam at Osceola concentrated the spawning run of paddlefish. Before Truman Dam, the best spawning riffles for the paddlefish were between Osceola and Lake of the Ozarks. Truman Dam now thwarts the spawning run and has covered their opportunity for natural reproduction in Missouri. The Conservation Department maintains the population by raising them in hatcheries. Today artificially raised paddlefish are released into the reservoirs for the benefit of snaggers. Snagging with big treble hooks is the only way they can be taken. You can’t bait a hook with tiny zooplankton.

As beluga sturgeon are now a threatened species, an illegal trade in paddlefish eggs has developed. Poachers with Russian names have been arrested for smuggling paddlefish eggs and the caviar made from them. Their caviar sells for about $250 a pound. Mature females often carry 20 pounds of eggs (roe).

 

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid. Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, a 304-page color-illustrated book, tells the dramatic saga of human ambition pitted against natural limitations and forces beyond man’s control.

WHAT A COMBINATION—PHOTO GALLERY AND BUTCHER SHOP!

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Apr 032022
 

Cabinet card, Linn Creek, Missouri, circa 1890. F. Lloyd, photographer.

Young Sam Clemens grew up in a bigger Missouri river town than Linn Creek, but this photograph preserves a scene not unlike those Mark Twain described of his Hannibal childhood. Linn Creek on the Osage River would be drowned by Lake of the Ozarks in 1931 but this insane image—three Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn types on a steer in front of The Combination Meat Market and Picture Gallery, suggests it was not unlike the great writer’s hometown, a place populated by high-spirited folks with a sense of humor.

Once the county seat of Camden County, Linn Creek was a lively steamboat landing 31 miles upstream from where Bagnell Dam would be built in 1929. A merchant advertised in 1848 three steamships had delivered “One Thousand Sacks G. A. Salt, 150 Bags Rio Coffee and 70 Barrels of Rectified Whiskey.”  That confirms what everyone knows—frontier Ozarkers drank a lot of whiskey. It also challenges several other assumptions. Everyone in the Ozarks wasn’t a moonshiner making their own booze.  And the region wasn’t as isolated as is often assumed. Goods were coming in from far away.

Wish we had acquired this image some years ago when we published Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, which had extensive coverage of the drowned town. Leland’s grandmother (whom he never knew) was born in old Linn Creek. Perhaps she bought some pork chops at the combination establishment after having her portrait taken by F. Lloyd, about whom we could find no information.

 

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

Legendary Ha Ha Tonka “Castle”

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Jan 262022
 

Robert M. Snyder engaged the services of a Kansas City architectural firm, A. Van Brunt and Brother, to design a spacious residence and complex of supporting structures. Like Snyder, Adriance Van Brunt had come to Kansas City around 1880 and with his brother John enjoyed rapid success. He was a believer in the City Beautiful Movement and for a decade was a member of the Board of Park Commissioners. This outlook and experiences made him a singular architect to transform wild Ha Ha Tonka into the “gentleman’s estate” the senior Snyder desired.

From Ha Ha Tonka State Park History: He envisioned a European-style castle with 60 rooms and a center atrium rising three and one-half stories to a skylight. He also planned a water tower, greenhouses and stables. The materials were extracted from the area, with sandstone quarried nearby and transported by a mule-drawn wagon and miniature railroad.

Construction of his dream home in the Ozarks began in 1905. Robert M. Snyder was killed in a car accident in Kansas City in October of 1906 and it was left to his sons to complete. After his father’s untimely death, one of Robert Jr.’s duties was to dispose of the distant estate. Colonel Scott’s Carter’s Magazine article had already given it some status as a natural wonder, calling the place a park. With Herbert Hadley, the float-tripping progressive Republican as governor, it seemed that selling Ha Ha Tonka to the state might go easily. In 1909, a bill authorizing its purchase failed by one vote in the Missouri House. From then on Robert Snyder Jr. encountered years of frustration trying to facilitate an adequately compensated transfer to public ownership. In his booklet, Hahatonka in the Ozarks (1914), Snyder emphasized the place’s aesthetic and historic value. As much as he loved it, the family needed to sell it.

Bob Snyder, Jr. became an expert on early Missouri history and a collector of its literature.  He was passionately involved with the property he was trying to sell.

 

From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

 

A Kansas City Capitalist Discovers The Ozarks

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Jan 062022
 

Robert M. Snyder was a Kansas City businessman, capitalist, and lover of the outdoors.  R.M Snyder’s triumphs had come in the natural gas, oil, real estate, and banking businesses, and he was the organizer of what became the Kansas City Life Insurance Company.

While staying at a hotel in Lebanon owned by Major Kellogg, Robert McClure Snyder Sr. was told about fabulous Ha Ha Tonka by Colonel R. G. Scott. The Kansas City capitalist was an active sportsman. His great-grandson, Bob Snyder, reported he had considered buying Roaring River. In 1904, he purchased Ha Ha Tonka spring and lake from Col. Scott and added sixty tracts.

According to Scott, Snyder’s holdings amounted to 5,300 acres “of Camden county’s most beautiful hills and streams.” In an extensive interview (The Springfield Press, Oct. 19, 1929), he recounted the beginnings of Snyder’s Ozarks retreat:

“Mr. Snyder’s advent in the Ozarks gave me (Col. Scott) new hope. It brought development to the county I believe to be Missouri’s greatest asset. Twenty-four years ago we started building the Snyder castle and tower at Ha Ha Tonka. But death intervened to prevent Snyder seeing his dream castle completed.”

When his big new green Royal Tourist motorcar skidded on the freshly oiled street, Snyder was fifty-four. He had come far since arriving in Kansas City around 1880 to engage in the wholesale fancy grocery business. The paper mentions his ambitious project in the Ozarks:

Two years ago Mr. Snyder acquired, under a mortgage foreclosure, Ha-Ha-Tonka Lake and a tract of 2,700 acres surrounding it, a famous natural park in southeast Missouri. Ha-Ha-Tonka Lake, a beautiful sheet of water seventy acres in extent, includes an island, precipitous, picturesque and honeycombed with onyx caves. On the topmost crest of this island Mr. Snyder set about the erection of a summer home of such proportions as to astound the residents of that remote district. The structure had an appearance of a hotel rather than of a private residence, and was to cost, it is said, $50,000 or more.

“Here I will spend my leisure—secure from the worries of business, and the excitement of city life,” the owner said. “I will fish and loaf and explore the eaves in these hills, with no fear of intrusion.

“At the time of his death,” speculated the Star, “It was generally understood he was making money rapidly. He was a man who understood big things and made them win by keeping up the fight when other men might have been ready to give up.”

From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

Origin of Ha Ha Tonka Mythos

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Nov 102021
 

In Damming the Osage, we wrote about the connection between Col. R. G. Scott and Robert M. Snyder, who built Ha Ha Tonka.

Colonel R. G. Scott came from Iowa to the Ozarks around 1890 where he futilely attempted to promote a railroad linking Jefferson City and Springfield. He and a friend, Major R. D. Kelly, bought or optioned a large parcel of land around Gunter Spring from Jack Roach. His son, Sydney Roach, was an attorney on the Snyder legal team.

Likely, it was the Colonel who built the low dam that created the lake that would be subsumed by Lake of the Ozarks. Possibly, it was he who stocked it with rainbow trout. Probably, it was Scott who coined the name Ha Ha Tonka, although he claimed a Captain Lodge learned that name from a group of visiting Osage Indians. Certainly, it was Colonel Scott who published the first article extolling Ha Ha Tonka’s natural wonders in an 1898 issue of Carter’s Magazine.

A 1929 article in The Springfield Press (Oct. 19), “Pioneer Enthusiast Of the Ozarks, Who Dreamed of Dams, Hopes to Live to See Vision Accomplished Fact,” confirms our supposition: “(Ha Ha Tonka was) the first development in the Camden county Ozarks and came through the vision of Colonel Scott, who sold the land and the idea to the late R. M. Snyder, and incidentally it resulted in Scott building the first dam in the Ozarks to form Ha-Ha-Tonka lake. “

“Colonel Scott said he named the Snyder tract Ha-Ha-Tonka because it is the Osage Indian name for Laughing Water.” This was the beginning of our awareness of the bogus nature of many “Indian legends,” which some years later led us to research and write our recent book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco.

After the death of R.M. Snyder as the backed-up Osage obliterated Ha Ha Tonka’s small lake, the sons battled Union Electric for compensation for damages for their lost trout lake. From 1930 to 1936, trials and appeals continued in the courts. At his death on February 9, 1937, Robert McClure Snyder, Jr. was planning an appeal to the Supreme Court.

From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir.

Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

Gentrification of an Outlaw Hangout on the Osage River

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Oct 102021
 

Club House, Monegaw Springs, real photo postcard by Becraft

Between bank, stage, and train robberies, the Younger Brothers’ gang found refuge and recreation in the rugged hills of the Osage. Grandfather Younger had settled here in the 1840s. Relatives and even former slaves of the family took pride in sheltering the outlaws. Frank and Jesse James on occasion joined the Youngers at the billiard table in the spacious hall of the log hotel at Monegaw Springs. The young men attended dances where they thrilled local girls with stories of their exploits on behalf of the vanquished.

In 1905 the old house and 300 acres were acquired by a group of Kansas City businessmen who created “The Monegaw Club.” The KC headquarters of the club were in the office of Mr. James B. Keister, 706 Bank of Commerce Building. The Henry County Democrat, August. 3, 1905 took several paragraphs from the Kansas City Journal description:

“The old log tavern on the crest of Mount Monegaw, now the property of the club, is one of the historic buildings of St. Clair county. The hotel was built in1854 by Thomas Estes and Harry Davis, both well known in the county at that time and still remembered. The building was originally intended for a hotel and since its erection has been conducted as such, with the exception of a short period during the war.

A fifteen foot veranda has been built around the old log hotel, which is being remodeled, retaining as much as possible its original rustic features—An up-to-date café and grill room will be one of the attractions at the club; other modern conveniences will be introduced. A pumping system, which required some skilled engineering, has been installed, and for the first time in the history of this ancient resort, the sulpher water is being pumped to the top of Monegaw hill. A bathhouse with sulpher plunge, sulpher baths, vapor baths and mud baths will be maintained.”

At the time it was built, the log hotel was said to be the largest log structure west of the Mississippi. Kansans burned the town during the Civil War, but spared the hotel. The old log hotel burned in 1926.

 

From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

Outlaw Geography and Their Poetry

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Sep 102021
 

Younger’s Bluff at Monegaw, real photo postcard.

 

 

Youngers Lookout is an often-photographed feature of the Monegaw Springs area.

Cole Younger, the last surviving member of the James-Younger Gang, is said to have had his picture taken here in the early 1900s after his release from a Minnesota prison. The attachment of his name to this bluff may date from that event and not the gunfight of 1874 with Pinkerton agents, which occurred some three miles away.

Known as the Rosco Gun Battle, one Younger and two Pinkerton detectives were killed. Two monuments mark the spot along the lonely St. Clair County road where it occurred.

In 1897, Cole Younger, serving life with brother Jim in a Minnesota prison after the disastrous 1876 Northfield bank robbery that finished the James-Younger gang, wrote a sentimental poem:

 

 

‘Tis twenty years and more, Jim

Since we breathed the air of home.

Or gazed upon the hills and vales

We loved to oft to roam . . .

 

One grim old cliff I have in mind

That stands majestic, grand,

While far below the fair Osage

Sweeps o’er her silver sand.

 

There countless names are carved with ours

Where we have stood with awe

And gazed upon its marble face,

Near dear old Monegaw!

Many names of vacationers are carved into the sandstone bluffs along the Osage. We’ve looked, but never found any of the Youngers’ names.

 

From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

Joseph W. McClurg, 19th Governor of Missouri

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Aug 172021
 

Joseph McClurg was governor of Missouri from January 12, 1869 to January 4, 1871.

 

 

 

Joseph W. McClurg and partners grossed half-a-million dollars a year at their Linn Creek Big Store before the Civil War. The well-educated, dapper gentleman was a strong Union supporter. When hostilities erupted, rebels burned his store and warehouses.

After the War, McClurg was elected to Congress three times and governor once. Attempting to revive his store on the river in the 1870s, he found the new railroads made his steamboat-based enterprise obsolete. The soft-spoken, religious, teetotalling McClurg could be considered the most distinguished figure in early Osage valley history. Certainly, he was the only personage in the region photo­graphed by Mathew Brady.

 

 

From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com/buy-the-book/ for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

 

Steamboat J.R. Wells Unloading at Tuscumbia, Circa 1900

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Jul 222021
 

 

This stern-wheeler worked the river below Warsaw delivering farm produce and timber to a rail connection at Osage City, or St. Louis, returning with merchandise. Log books in the collection of the Miller County Museum and Historical Society enumerated its 1904 cargo:

“Here are items the Wells carried that year: 5,337 sacks of wheat, 2 tons hay, 305 head of cattle, 1,439 railroad ties, 445 head sheep, 2,587 hogs, 280 gallons wine and whiskey, 956 cases eggs, 134 coops of poultry, 14,122 pounds produce, 215,122 pounds farm machinery, 8,208 pounds bacon, 961 barrels salt, 16,484 pounds iron, 33 barrels oil, 33 tons coal, 128,403 pounds wire, 41,760 feet oak lumber, 20,000 pounds mill machinery, 123,177 feet pine lumber, 1,852 bunches shingles, 34,4060 pounds sewer pipe, 6 barrels lime, 124 barrels cement, 150 brick, 150,000 pounds clay or chalk, 756 sacks corn in ear, 620 bushels shelled corn and 140 passengers.”

The Miller County Historical Association has an interesting history of early navigation on the rivers on http://www.millercountymuseum.org/rivernav.html

 

From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale for all titles. Damming the Osage is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

 

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