CAN YOU TOP THESE? Moving ads for Lake of the Ozarks Recreation

 Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 012023
 

Painted aluminum license plate topper, 1940s. Aluminum replaced steel in almost everything due to the World War 2 war effort. As aluminum didn’t rust it continued to be used post war. Below it is a less detailed image of the icon of Lake of the Ozarks, Bagnell Dam. Painted steel. Possibly in the late 1930s.

When Americans took to the highways for family vacations, license plate toppers were affixed to their automobile’s back plate. They advertised a place or business. A few identified the vehicle owner’s profession. They were in vogue before cars were required to have two plates and before automobile designs that don’t have space around the plate for the advertising message. Most are from the 1930s to 1980s. Occasionally one sees a descendant of the topper—a license plate holder advertising a sports team, car dealer, or organization. Bumper stickers advertising “Cowboy Bob’s Reptile Ranch” were a topper’s low-class relative slapped on by a teenage lad as you gawked at diamondbacks as fat as a truck tire.

The motif of license toppers of tourist regions, like souvenirs, usually conveyed what was thought to attract visitors or sometimes dramatic architecture or an unusual landscape feature. When Bagnell Dam closed in 1931, Union Electric of St. Louis, its builder, was bursting with pride about the multi-million-dollar hydroelectric project which backed up the Osage River creating 1,100 miles of shoreline. Images of this marvel of modern technology became the region’s icon. Union Electric would be forced to sell these developable properties before a tourism boom. While the public did take tours of the powerhouse, it doesn’t seem likely that very many planned their vacation around witnessing the creation of electricity from running water.

Lazy Days Resort, Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper, marked Vernon Co. Newton, IA. Possibly 1950s. “Fishin’s good” (below) Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper. 1950s? Its graphic style is reminiscent of Jazz Age cartoonist John Held Jr. but there weren’t many promotional artifacts from Lake of the Ozarks during Held’s heyday. No specific business is promoted so it’s unclear what its origins were.

Lake of the Ozarks tourist advertising rarely featured any version of the indigenous population compared to Branson and the Shepherd of the Hills country. This reclining country bumpkin is not accessorized with a jug of corn whiskey or a floppy eared hound. He’s rural, but not a stereotypical hillbilly.

The Vernon Company is still going strong. Founded in 1902, today they employ 500 people producing products branded for promotion. Through the years their design work has been eye-catching. One of their 1950s license toppers of a roller-skating girl with “God Bless America” advertises a Philadelphia Roller Rink. It was on eBay for $395.

Lake of the Ozarks attractions have always been somewhat generic compared to Branson’s specifically regional reasons to visit—float fishing, country music, and frontier history theme parks. Branson’s symbol was Old Matt’s Cabin, domicile of the god-fearing hill folk in Harold Bell Wright’s romantic The Shepherd of the Hills. This bestseller identified the upper White River Hills as a region that had preserved old time ways. Curiously, we’re not aware of license plate toppers with a log cabin or any representation of the anachronistic culture of the place. The two tourist venues have very different beginnings and pitches to vacationers with different promotional strategies.

Our 5,000-piece collection of Ozark memorabilia and souvenirs contains license plate toppers from Lake of the Ozarks but none from Branson. The collection is now owned by Missouri State University Libraries-Ozarks Studies Institute.

Lazy Days Resort seems to have gone out of business around the year 2000. There is a Lazy Dayz Resort and RV Park at Lake of the Ozarks which opened three years ago. Their advertising used a man sipping a drink in a hammock. The reclining hillbilly of the Lazy Days license plate topper has evolved into a lazy tourist.

 

Most Lens & Pen titles are on sale on our website for half price, postage paid.  See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, where you can find many more examples of this contrasting branding, is now $12.50, postage paid.

COMPETING OZARK TOURISM ICONS: Old Matt’s Cabin vs. Bagnell Dam

 Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 292023
 

The two biggest tourist centers of the Ozarks are Branson and Lake of the Ozarks. While graphics used to promote travel do not necessarily accurately or honestly represent those places, they can betray the character and history of places. Such is the case with the imagery used to advertise and decorate souvenirs of these two attractions.

Souvenirs from the Shepherd of the Hills Country (Branson). Its dominant motif is Old Matt’s Cabin from Harold Bell Wright’s “The Shepherd of the Hills.” Tourism and recreation were not add-ons to a dam and reservoir project here. They long preceded the building of artificial reservoirs and featured fishing and outdoor recreation with the bucolic locals playing a role.

Branson, near the Missouri-Arkansas line in southwest Missouri, began attracting travelers in the early 190s. Harold Bell Wright’s bucolic novel, Shepherd of the Hills, drew attention to the upper White River hills and their rustic inhabitants. Wright portrayed the inhabitants as colorful primitives and locals claimed to be the inspiration for various characters. The Ross house, known as Old Matt’s Cabin, became a symbol of for the area. It decorated brochures and gifts communicating that a vacation in the Shepherd of the Hills country was trip to the trouble-free past.

Lake of the Ozarks, on the northern flank of the Ozarks was created in 1931 by the closing of Bagnell Dam. This blockage of the Osage River was built by Union Electric (now AmerenUE) to supply electricity. Lacking any comparable settler mythos, pictures of the dam represented the new lake. This wonder of technology was plastered on tourist promotions and souvenirs. From the beginning, its recreational attractions have been hedonistic pleasure, boating, and fishing in the 54,000-acre reservoir. Perhaps the difficulty of picturing the artificial lake led to the inappropriate use of an industrial structure.

 

 

 

 

Lake of the Ozarks souvenirs feature Bagnell Dam, which created the reservoir for hydro-electric power, not recreation or flood control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most Lens & Pen titles are on sale on our website for half price, postage paid.  See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, where you can find many more examples of this contrasting branding, is now $12.50, postage paid.

 

Springfield “a Gem of a City”

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 222023
 

John T. Woodruff and the Chamber of Commerce had encouraged private companies in the 1920s and ’30s to harness the hydropower from Ozark streams. When they didn’t and the Army Corps of Engineers embarked on their massive White River multi-purpose dam campaign, Woodruff and packs of Springfield leaders traveled to Washington, DC, to testify before Congress on behalf of these projects.

An anonymous letter to the editor in the October 31, 1925, Springfield Leader captures the mystical association dams, roads, and prosperity had for that era’s believers in progress. Springfield, the author implies, should become the Queen City of Ozark water resource development. Transforming the free-flowing streams into reservoirs, along with “excellent highways,” would make the town a “fountainhead” of wealth:

“Springfield is the nipple on the breast of the Ozarks. Within the circumference of this Ozarkian breast are more stupendous hydro-electric projects than in any same area in America. No less than six enormous projects, involving $200,000,000! … Not dreams, but projects as sure to be developed as water runs down hill, and its running may be changed into gold. Why Florida is a piker compared to our Ozarks. And these enormous dams will empound vast inland lakes, converting the Ozarks into a wonderland for the tourists developing hotels and pleasure resorts rivaling the dreams of Florida. Now consider our excellent highways, draining like milk ducts, the wealth and patronage of these marvelous Ozarks into Springfield, its fountain’s head. Will Springfield grow? We guess yes.”

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

 

A True Ozark Icon: the Hillbilly

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 172023
 

Controversy over viewing the Ozarks as a refuge of degenerate primitives has a long history. This symbol of profound rusticity upset promoters and businessmen like John Woodruff but defenders of the premodern Ozarks rushed to defend even the stereotypical hillbilly. On March 27, 1934, The Springfield Leader and Press reprinted highlights of the disastrous meeting of the Springfield Folk Festival advisory committee with Chamber of Commerce leadership. Replying to accusations that they were “advertising to the world that we are ignorant”:

“We are not trying to present freaks or ignoramuses,” the honorable district chairman said. “We are just trying to preserve some of the old, lovely, beautiful, wonderful things that went into the making of the country. I am not ashamed of some of the things my parents did.” “Of course, it does not have to be rough, rowdy, and hoedownish,” the Springfield city chairman said. “Oh, yes it does,” put another leader. “It wouldn’t be the Ozarks if it didn’t.” “You mean we’re not going to have hill billies with beards?”

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

 

Chamber of Commerce President Incensed by Violent Obscene Novel of the Ozark Hills

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Sep 252023
 

“Mountain Music Lovers On March To Springfield; Chamber of Commerce Looks Askance at Hill Billy Antics; Old Fiddlers Will Torture Ears of Progressive Ozark City,” read a headline from The Jefferson City Post-Tribune:

“The new broadside was fired by John T. Woodruff, president of the Chamber, who told sponsors of the Ozarks folk festival across the table last night that writers on Ozarkian subjects are “a lot of carpetbaggers” and that Harold Bell Wright, who first “touted the Ozarks hardly knew a thing about them and held up the class of citizenship at the foot of the ladder.” He said that Vance Randolph, Ozark author who was present, had been “consorting with some of the undercrust and took them as typical.”

And he added he wondered why “the woods colt” [sic], a recent Ozarks novel by Thames Williamson had not been suppressed. “The Ozarkians,” said Woodruff, “are a lovable people. Never get the idea that they are uncouth, illiterate and mean – the real Ozarkian is high-minded, patriotic and God fearing and he made here a near perfect a civilization as it is possible to make in a wilderness.”

The Springfield Leader and Press covered the banquet as well. “The worst thing about Vance,” said Woodruff, “is his association with the author of ‘The Wood’s Colt.’” That novel was described in Kirkus Review as “a story of the Ozarks, with the seemingly unavoidable component parts: bootleggers, moonshiners, revenue officers, sheriffs, blood feuds, the hero of the piece, and the villain.” Vance Randolph had gone over the dialect for authenticity, and Williamson dedicated the book to him. Time magazine thought it deserved a Pulitzer. The author of the book that Woodruff thought “should be suppressed” wasn’t present, but Randolph was.

McCord leapt to his defense. “Vance Randolph is the greatest authority on the Ozarks living today.” Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce president praised Woodruff for his “pioneering in the way of better roads” but said he was indebted to Randolph for his interest in things Ozarkian.

Vance refused to comment. “Mr. Ozark” had signed on to be a judge largely because he found Sarah Gertrude Knott fetching.

 

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

 

Woodruff Believed Springfield’s 1934 Folk Festival was “a lot of freaks”

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 122023
 

 

 The committee for the first Springfield Folk Festival, held in 1933. Vance Randolph is third from left, and Sarah Gertrude Knott, the woman he was attracted to, is on the far right. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who also fancied Miss Knott, is the gent with the bow tie. May Kennedy McCord is fifth from the left.

In the spring of 1934, the Springfield Chamber of Commerce was presented with a very different opportunity to celebrate the Ozarks Empire. May Kennedy McCord, of KWTO’s radio show “Hillbilly Heartbeats,” was on the advisory committee for the upcoming First National Folk Festival to be held in St. Louis, Missouri, beginning April 29. Folk-play and folk-dance enthusiast Sarah Gertrude Knott conceived of that four-day event. Banjo-playing, bowtie-wearing, ballad-singing Bascom Lamar Lunsford, “Minstrel of the Appalachians,” assisted her. The St. Louis Chamber of Commerce enthusiastically backed the venture. Leading up to the main event, contests at smaller festivals would decide who would take the stage in St. Louis to fiddle, yodel, or clog. McCord’s friend Vance Randolph was asked to be one of the judges. She asked if the local committee could meet in late March with the Chamber to solicit support for a Springfield venue.

That meeting did not go well. A blow-by-blow account appeared in The Pittsburgh (Kansas) Headlight of March 22, 1934. On March 27, the Springfield Leader and Press reprinted highlights from it entitled, “The Ozarks and Culture.” “A lot of freaks should not be selected to go to the national festival,” John T. Woodruff, a Chamber official told the shocked group. “Why call back the things we’ve been trying to forget for fifty years? Why advertise to the world that we are ignorant?”

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

Lost Attractions of the Ozarks – A fun read!

 Beautiful Ozarks, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 232023
 

It’s a guided tour of the bygone and often amusingly naïve efforts to attract travelers and tourists of the Ozark hills of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Up front is a disclaimer, “Okay faithful readers, this is your final warning. If you have an aversion to traditional hillbilly stereotypes such as these, you are advised to turn around and go back right now, because things are only going to get worse from here.” Scruffy mountaineers are indeed a regional icon, but they have apparently left the roadsides retreating deeper into the woods. Today’s motifs are more likely to be borrowed from popular culture. In Chapter One, “Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hillbillies,” the shift is noted:

“Today’s young people are totally unfamiliar with the traditional “hillbilly” image made famous by movies, television, cartoons and the tourism industry. There are no doubt many mountain residents who consider that a good thing, but there was indeed a time when the depiction of the lazy, bearded hillbilly with floppy hat and accompanying hound dog was among the most popular graphics of the Ozarks.”

Remnants of hillbilly signage are scarce and in shabby shape. The book compensates for this by using pristine examples photographed by John Margolies, the godfather of roadside Americana. His sharp color-saturated depictions of crazy attractions enliven the review of past Ozark tourism. A chrome orange billboard for Dogpatch USA is on the cover. Tim Hollis has an enormous archive of memorabilia, tourist literature and souvenirs. They too of course are still vivid and contrast with contemporary shots of decaying and abandoned attractions.

Hollis is a superb tour guide. His corny humor notwithstanding, it must be admitted this stuff invites satiric comment. He is addicted to Hee-Haw humor. Among his 39 published titles is Rural Comedy in the Twentieth Century. It was published, as were a number of other of his pop culture studies, by the University Press of Mississippi.

This profusely illustrated, well organized and researched book was a breezy read. Hollis’ approach is neither condescending nor campy. The awesome capacity of roadside attractions to be tastelessly compelling is proven. As he admonished in the beginning: if you’re troubled by the cliches of moonshine-making hill folk, this won’t be a book for you. Of all regional and ethnic stereotypes, the Ozark mountaineer has largely skirted controversy.

A strength of this book is that the author visited many of the shuttered tourist businesses and reports on the actualities of their demise. He also reached out to fellow aficionados of roadside culture. Count us as one. We supplied several photographs and three of our Ozarks books are listed in the bibliography.

Tim Hollis has successfully portrayed these perished attractions because he is in sync with their goofy charm and wondrous indifference to good taste.

Lost Attractions of the Ozarks is the latest in Tim Hollis’s series of Lost Attractions of… books published by The History Press, Charleston, SC. 144 pages, 6 x 9, $23.99.

Available at the publisher’s website, and on amazon.com  and Barnes & Noble

DANCING AT PICNIC IN THE OZARKS, 1910s

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 202022
 

Real photo postcard by George Hall

Unlike the posed hillbilly family real photo postcard we shared in June this is a straightforward document of the surviving folk culture on the upper White River, circa 1910.  Hillbilliness is based on these anachronisms.

Locals at this hoe-down appear to be wearing store bought clothes. Once the railroad made its way to southwest Missouri, Stone Countians had access to prêt-à-porter clothing just like the tourists.

Music and the moves it inspires have always been part of life in the Ozarks. Some of the Arcadian resorts built dance floors and natives joined in with visitors. Distinctions between locals and visitors were not always clear when melodies filled the air and boots and shoes started tapping. That tradition continues today in music festivals in the hills as well as regular weekly gatherings like Friday night parties at the old McClurg general store. The decades old weekly gathering was recently well represented at the Smithsonian Folklife Fest, on the Mall in Washington.

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:

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

Powersite Dam On The White River

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Feb 122022
 

Finished in 1913, Powersite was Missouri’s first venture into hydropower. A consortium of St. Louis investors engaged the Ambursen Hydro-Electric Construction Company of Boston to build one of their patented hollow, reinforced concrete structures. As would be the case eighteen years later on the Osage River, the original investors were replaced by a more substantial concern. New York capitalist Henry Doherty took over the project ultimately adding it to his Empire Electric Group, part of his mammoth Cities Services holding company.

Hundreds of these run-of-the-river dams with no storage capacity had been built back East where streams with adequate fall ran near populated areas. Missouri was late in developing hydropower because suitable Ozark rivers were far from cities. An incentive to build Powersite Dam was the opportunity to sell electricity to the mines of the Joplin lead district. Supplying power to St. Joseph Lead Co. in the St. Francois Mountains would be a consideration in the decision to build Bagnell Dam.

 

Powersite was the first dam on the storied White River. James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, 352 pages with more than 400 color illustrations, 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 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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