How Rough was “Roughing it in the Ozarks”?

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Aug 032020
 

Real photo postcard, circa 1910. Nothing on the back. Scratched in the negative: “Roughing in the Ozarks.”

The more we looked at this recently acquired postcard, the more we puzzled over it. What was going on? Who were the people? Locals or city folks? The clothes look more store-bought than homespun.  Was it all a setup? It’s not your standard “Life of the hillbillies” postcards sold at tourist shops. So we sent it to Lynn Morrow, Ozarks historian extraordinaire, to ask his opinion. He replied:
What a great postcard, new one to me.  My guesses include some of yours:
I’d guess they are from an Ozark town, the clothes are too good for a subsistence farmer; the “Roughing it in the Ozarks” was a common phrase in sporting and urban newspapers of the day, the traveling(?) photographer and/or locals are just imitating it & I’ve seen it elsewhere, but it is another hint of using an urban influence in the backwoods;
They aren’t too far from town or a sawmill with a dimension lumber shack (it looks like a tree rather than a stove pipe in the background) and the setting looks “Novemberish” to me for the campout; the woman in the background on the horse must be local, and maybe she brought the clothes’ pins to hang the textile on a line that is attached to the tree on the left;
The “T-pee” was popular with the emerging scouting and rural life movement that often included something “Indian” in costume, dress, etc.; the stripped wagon-type tent is surely another mail order product; the one girl in middle looks like she’s doing an Annie Oakley imitation;
The boy may be sitting on a “picnic” table, usually not seen in urban sportsmen images; the box on the ground behind the man on right might be a dry goods box of canned food and/or gear brought to the site;
but, puzzling to me is the apparent bamboo or cane poles that could be fishing poles, but why are they bound/wrapped high up unless that was just for traveling?
Regardless of guesses, the card is a keeper and should be published!
KWTO (Keep Working for the Ozarks),
Lynn
Lynn Morrow is the retired director of the Missouri State Archives’ Local Records Program, Missouri State University alum, and an Ozarks historian. His book, Shepard of the Hills Country: Tourism Transforms The Ozarks, occupies prime shelf space in our office and is festooned with post-it notes.
If anyone knows about it or has another interpretation please let us know.

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Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. You can see sample pages of our most recent book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com.

Lover’s Leap Legends won the bronze medal in the popular culture division of the 2020 Independent Publishers’ Book Awards, an international competition. This year there were entries from forty-four states, seven Canadian provinces and fifteen other countries.

James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River was a finalist in Regional Non-fiction in the 2019 Indie Book Awards. Lens & Pen Press’s earlier river book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, was awarded a silver medal by the Independent Publishers’ Book Awards in 2013.)

Branson’s College of the Ozarks had its beginnings in Forsythe

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
May 062020
 

Real photo postcard of some faculty of the School of the Ozarks on a 1909 outing at Swan Creek.

Along with Harold Bell Wright’s moralistic Shepherd of the Hills influence, a component of the region’s image has been the School of the Ozarks, now called College of the Ozarks (“Hard Work U.”). It began as an effort by the Presbyterian Church to expand the limited educational opportunities for Ozark children in the early 1900s. A $20,000 brick building was built on a hill overlooking Swan Creek. A fire destroyed it in 1915. The school used the facilities of the Forsyth Public School for a time until a campus was started at Point Lookout in Hollister where the College is today.

The Christian ethical influence of Harold Bell Wright and College of the Ozarks is in sharp contrast with the more secular origins of another Ozark tourist draw, Lake of the Ozarks. Two of the three men most influential in the creation of Bagnell Dam and the Lake did time in federal penitentiaries.

Lens & Pen books are available for purchase on this website on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. See sample pages from our new book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com

Redings Mill is long gone, but survives as a place name

 James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Feb 202020
 

Photographic print, 7” x 12” Unmarked but unmistakably Redings Mill.

There were actually two smaller early mills on Shoal Creek south of Joplin but the third mill was an impressive, multi-story structure of stone, burr and white oak, built in 1868 by John S. Reding. It burned on November 8, 1936, but its visual and historic influence survives. Before its demise, it was considered the most photographed structure in Southwest Missouri. There are many snapshots as well as postcards and professional photographs. This image is phenomenally detailed. Two women looking at boats below the dam give scale to the commanding building.

In the 1920s an extensive entertainment destination was developed, a resort with a swimming pool, golf course, and a hotel with a dining room to seat 150. A dance “palace” and casino opened in 1928. Of course, soon after, the Depression affected business. Two major fires hit the resort, one in 1932 and one in 1936 destroying the dance hall. The foreclosure sale in 1941 marked its official end.

Today, there is a village entity called Redings Mill, which is part of the Joplin area. Restaurants and services still attach Redings Mill to their name. Watermills were central to pioneer communities both economically and socially. That imprint is still alive today.

Lens & Pen books are available for purchase on this website on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. See sample pages from our new book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com

Progress comes to the Ozarks with the building of Powersite Dam

 James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Feb 112020
 

Printed on back: “Views of White River Dam, Camp Ozark, by A. K. Bishop, Forsyth, Mo.” Written in pencil, “Taneycomo Dam, Ozarks, June–1912.” Real photo postcard.

Powersite Dam, originally called White River Dam, was built by the Ambursen Hydraulic Construction Company of Boston. It is a hollow cement-slab and buttress structure. As we wrote in James Fork of the White, “Powersite Dam was not architecturally blatantly industrial. The narrow, twenty mile-long lake it created became regarded as part of nature, indistinguishable from the free-flowing river it replaced.”

The dapper gents in the photo seem to find something hilarious about “Three toots of whistle means blasting.” Numerous similar real photo postcards were taken of the activities connected with building the dam; some large albums exist that have been put together from them. Allen Kitchel (A.K.) Bishop died in 1925, but his wife, Grace May (Lefler) Bishop, continued their postcard business in Branson under the name of the White River Art Company, selling primarily hand-tinted, colored views printed lithographically.

The construction phase brought in cash to the local economy and afterward boosted Branson and Hollister tourism. A village of shacks was constructed to house and service workers. Later Corps of Engineers’ dams took massive amounts of farmland and were more controversial.

 

Lens & Pen books are available on this website on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. Our most recent book is James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River.

See sample pages from our forthcoming book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com Available in February.

 

 

Early View of White River Dam, aka Powersite Dam

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
Jan 132020
 

White River Dam, real photo postcard, Hall Photo Co., circa 1916

The first hydroelectric dam in the Ozarks was simply called the “White River Dam.” Soon after, the name was changed to Powersite Dam. A March 12, 1913 article in the Springfield Republican reported the Branson Club, a local business organization decided the name “Taneycomo” (derived from its location in Taney County Missouri) would attract tourists. They even compared the twenty-mile lake created by the run-of-the-river dam to Lake Como in the Swiss Alps.

Dam building on the White River was started in 1911 by St. Louis investors organized as the Ozark Power and Water Company. Henry L. Doherty and his gigantic Cities Service combine acquired it when the backers encountered financial difficulties. His utilities in southwest Missouri were branded Empire District Electric.

George Hall was an innovative photographer. A vertical, rather than horizontal, image with a small figure in the right-hand corner is a remarkable composition. His portrait of early tourism in the Branson/Galena area, aka Shepherd of the Hills Country, is unequaled. Over a couple of decades, he photographed politicians and local folks, important events and daily life, characters of legend and local fame—tourist sites and daily life. He printed postcards from his photographs and sold them locally. Real photo postcards are printed on sensitized photo postcard paper from the original negative of a large, roll film camera, creating a super sharp image.

 

Lens & Pen books are available on this website on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. Our most recent book is James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River.

See sample pages from our  forthcoming book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com Available in February.

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