THE LOST SPRING CREEK MILL AT HURLEY

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
Aug 192023
 

Water driven mills were a necessity in isolated Ozark valleys. They were a community gathering place and Ozarkers are enormously nostalgic about these symbols of frontier (or near frontier) subsistence lifestyle. Few are left.  Floods took out many and they were not maintained after being abandoned when improved transportation delivered commercially ground flour.

Had the son of the owner of the watermill at Hurley, Missouri, been more careful with his brush fire, we could have photographed an early and conventionally nostalgic rural relic. The rambling three-story, crudely built, added-on, and deteriorating structure built in 1892 was being restored when it burned to ashes on April 3, 2005. The site today consists of a few fire-scorched and rusty pieces of machinery set among some foundation stones. Invasive weeds and sumac are already being replaced by trees. In another decade finding any evidence there was ever a historic mill here will require archaeology

There was a time in the 1920s and ’30s when the railroad brought opportunity to this village five miles east of Crane. A 1927 Stone County booklet pronounced with only a little puffery:

Hurley is said to be the most mutual, cooperative and moral town in Stone County. It is a small town on the Missouri Pacific between Crane and Springfield and surrounded by very fertile, productive land, and it claims proportionally, the largest trade of any town in the county. A stream of clear spring water runs through the center of the town sufficient to grind out the best flour, meal and feed; and the pretty homes and streets are all clean and the inhabitants healthy.

Mary Scott Hair, a cousin of Dewey Short, wrote a paid column beginning in 1948 under the pen name “Samanthy” for the Crane Chronicle recording the life and times of Hurleyites. Her father had once owned the Spring Creek Mill, and she and her husband and daughter worked a small farm nearby. In a 1982 interview printed in Bittersweet she summed up her life: “I have lived in Hurley all my life and I probably won’t live anywhere else. I am rooted and grounded in Hurley. My younger days were Hurley’s best days. Sometime I wonder whether or not it was all make believe.”

Taken from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, now on sale for $17.50 (half price) postage paid, at www.beautifulozarks.com

The Battle for Ozarks Identity

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
Aug 122023
 

John T. Woodruff: progressive president of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce.

Woodruff had thousands of copies of “The Ozark Empire Magazine” distributed at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. It mentions the region’s good fishing but said its rivers could be “harnessed for power development.” The stage was set for a battle between the Chamber’s vision of modernity and the romantics and folklorists. As May Kennedy McCord (Queen of the Hillbillies) wrote “I am tired of manmade wonders.”

John Thomas Woodruff, like John Polk Campbell, Springfield’s original booster, was dedicated to growing his town by improving transportation. He is locally considered the father of Route 66. Woodruff came to Springfield as a lawyer for the Frisco Railroad, built half a dozen important buildings, and tirelessly promoted the city.  Both men sought to alter the White River to make it commercially useful. Campbell pulled snags to improve it for steamboats. Woodruff lobbied successfully for high dams that would transform the free-flowing river into reservoirs.
                                                                                                                 James Fork of the White, p. 139

In 2016, Tom Peters, Dean of Library Services for Missouri State University, published “an encyclopedic biography” of the civic-minded entrepreneur. Although history has bestowed the official moniker, Father of Route 66, on Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, John T. Woodruff was one of the movers behind the designation of that highway. He was among the group of highway advocates and engineers at the Colonial Hotel in Springfield, August 30, 1926, that sent a telegram to Washington accepting the number 66 assigned to a federal highway from Chicago to Los Angeles. Because of that designation, today Springfield boasts the “birthplace” tag and annually hosts the “Birthplace of Route 66 Festival.”

Lesser known is the fact Woodruff also became the first president of the U.S. 66 Highway Association.

James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, now on sale for $17.50 (half price) postage paid, at www.beautifulozarks.com

John T. Woodruff, An Encyclopedic Biography is available at the History Museum on the Square in Springfield, the PawPrints Bookstore in Plaster Student Union on the campus of Missouri State University, at the Rail Haven Motel in Springfield, or directly from the publisher.

Congressman Dewey Short – Hillbilly and Orator and proud of it

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 092022
 

Press photo, May 9, 1938, showing Congressman Short, Rep. Dudley White and their wives at a DC barn dance.

Dewey Short was “an avowed Hill-Billy.” Neither he nor renowned folklorist Vance Randolph ever disavowed the term. Unlike the transplanted Kansas folklorist, the educated congressman was an Ozark native. Like politicians from Andrew Jackson on, he exploited his backwoods credentials. The cutline of this press photo, “Chicken and Fixin’s YUM YUM,” notes they were dressed in “approved rustic styles” at a D.C. barn dance. Galena’s famous son alternately postured as an Oxford schooled philosophy professor and a Stone County hillbilly. And he was both.

Born in Galena to a family of 10 children, he served in the infantry in World War I, then graduating from Baker University in 1919 and from Boston University in 1922. Short also attended Harvard University, Heidelberg University, the University of Berlin, and Oxford University. Dewey rose to national prominence as the Representative of Missouri’s 7th congressional district.

In 1942, the St.  Louis Star and Times sent a reporter down to Galena to find out, “Just who is Dewey Short, this 44-year-old, one-man hillbilly band from the Ozarks, who has been elected for four straight terms in Congress from the Seventh District in Southwest Missouri?”  Encountering Jackson Short, Dewey’s father, the reporter “came to the right place.”  Writer Ralph S. O’Leary noted that “the oratorical gifts” for which Dewey Short was noted came from his father, “who talks fluently and decisively.” Dewey’s own speechmaking talents earned him the moniker, “Orator of the Ozarks.”

 

From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, 352 pages with more than 400 color illustrations. Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

 

EARLY ENTRY IN HILLBILLY CARICATURE

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Jun 082022
 

The idea the Ozarks is inhabited by primitives has been perpetuated in books by educated travelers like Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, in popular songs like the “Arkansaw Traveler,” and in souvenir postcards, like this one by otherwise-respected photographer George Hall.

We have incorporated many quotes by Lynn Morrow in our books. This paragraph from Shepherd of the Hills County: Tourism Transforms the Ozarks, 18802-1930s by Lynn Morrow and Linda Meyers-Phinney, so perfectly describes this posed photograph that we use it in its entirety. The book exquisitely describes the romanticism and sentimentality that pervaded early Ozark tourism. Like Mark Twain, the authors debunk popular culture without dismissing the people who embraced its mythologies.

Morrow and Meyers-Phinney reproduced the Hall postcard, captioning it, “Commercial stereotyping using the Arkansaw Traveler story.”

Twentieth century Arcadians came to the White River expecting to see rustics whom the national press labelled as hillbillies, since journalists and tourists had used the term from the very beginning of commercial tourism. Ozarkers quickly learned to cash in on the demeaning hillbilly image. If the tourists wanted to see hillbillies, then hillbillies made their appearances. Float-fishing guides were model hillbillies at the gravel bar camps, telling tall tales and manipulating their Mid-South dialect for the enjoyment of sportsmen; locals at resorts and the legendary sites of Harold Bell Wright’s novel took up the challenge of dramatizing the hillbilly stereotype for visitors.

As we found in the gift shop of the Shepherd of the Hills Ziprider Canopy Tours tower, the practice continues:

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CHARLEY BARNES, famed James River fishing guide, with brothers John and Herbert

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
May 122022
 

Robert Page Lincoln profiled Charley Barnes, James River guide and john boat builder, in a long article titled “Floating Down the River” in the March 1948 issue of Fur-Fish-Game magazine.

The caption from the 1948 article reads, “This photo of Charley Barnes and his two brothers, Herbert and John, was taken in 1909 about the time that the Barnes float trip business at Galena, Mo., was at the height of its success. Barnes told Lincoln that the bass shown in this photo are the same average size as those taken now. Reading left to right are Herbert, John, and Charley Barnes.”

Charley later developed a distaste for trophy photos. Fishermen would keep more fish than they could eat to take an impressive picture. All the early river guides were supporters of the conservation movement and fish and game laws as they viewed the protection of natural resources to be in their business interests and encouraged an early form of catch-and-release.

Barnes was born near Mount Vernon in 1878. The family moved to a farm near the James three miles from Galena when he was eight. He and his brothers spent much time fishing this historic river and their catches were such that Barnes conceived of the idea of making boats and taking out fishing parties. At the age of 26, in 1904 Barnes started taking out his first parties.

Though his big city customers may have considered Barnes a “hillbilly” – he not only built the john boats they floated in, but with his brother he also owned the Galena Ford agency.

 

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork of the White, Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and other titles– all are now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.

“Largest ever” – James River float trip for L. B Price Mercantile, 1923

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
Apr 132022
 

Real photo postcard, by Fox. 1923

The L.B. Price Mercantile Company was incorporated 18 February 1898 and almost made it to 100 years, being dissolved in 1993. In its heyday it was a “great business house,” whose main offices and storerooms were at 13th and McGee in Kansas City. According to an undated (but likely early 1900s) article in the Kansas City Star profiling the firm, L.B. Price had retail stores selling “household specialties” across the southeast and into the Midwest and employed more than 600 people.

This 1923 photo most likely shows men of the company’s management. A short bio of L. B. Price called him one of Kansas City’s “millionaire merchants.” We speculated in James Fork of the White (p. 249) that the large, relaxed group might have been traveling salesman (then called drummers). However, the article lauded the company for annually bringing its managers from around the country to Kansas City to report on their year and plan the future.  Considering that, it’s more likely that this “largest ever” James River float trip might have been a reward to managers for a successful year of sales.

Urban clientele like this were no doubt entertained by the tall tales and witticisms of the colorful local guides. Doubtlessly the businessmen referred to them as hillbillies, but not in a derogatory fashion.

 

From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, 352 pages with more than 400 color illustrations, which examines the entire watershed of the famed Ozark float stream, a tributary of the White River. Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork of the White is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

WHAT A COMBINATION—PHOTO GALLERY AND BUTCHER SHOP!

 Damming the Osage, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
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.

LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS Garners Praise and Awards

 Lens & Pen Press, Lover's Leap Legends  No Responses »
Sep 252021
 

Lens & Pen Press is having a half price sale on all inventory. All titles now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.

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