Mt. Nebo Arkansas Lover’s Leap

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Aug 072019
 

Real photo postcard, “Looking north from Lovers Leap, Mt. Nebo, Ark. GNissom Photo.” Circa 1910.

This card is a little battered card with a corner missing, but it captures a pretty cool image. In the distant background is the Summit Park Hotel opened in 1889 by Captain Joseph Evans and the Mount Nebo Improvement Company. This luxury hotel catered to the upper class, and during the summer season as many as five thousand people lived or vacationed there. The hotel burned down in 1919.

One trail through Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Mena, Arkansas now bears the name Lover’s Leap Trail. We found little about the legend from which it got its name, so we contacted the park. Jackie Rupp, the park interpreter, provided this tale, with the following caveat: “I have no idea how old that story is or how accurate. I have no clue about the source of this story. It could have come from someone who used to work here who made it up and passed it along to other people who worked here. It could have come from a resident who lives on Mount Nebo. It could have been written down, and I just haven’t found it. I haven’t found any newspaper articles about a woman who committed suicide up here. I haven’t found anywhere where this particular story is written down. It may or may not be a good idea to include that story in your book.”

The Lover’s Leap tale she often recounts on walking tours of the park tells the story of a woman who worked at the hotel and fell in love with a wealthy man staying there. “One night, he told her to meet him at Fern Lake, a pond below Lover’s Leap. The woman stole off to Fern Lake to meet him but when she got there, she saw him with another woman. She was so distraught she climbed to Lover’s Leap and jumped off, killing herself. “

Mt. Nebo in Polk County, Arkansas, is technically in the Ouachita Mountains, not the Ozarks, but they share some geomorphic and cultural history. One of the highest peaks in Arkansas and now a state park, Mt. Nebo is a popular recreational area.

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

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

Dinner Time On The James

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Jul 082019
 

Stereo card stamped G.W. Sittler, 1880s.

Penciled on the back is the title, “Dinner time on the James.” Presumably this was an informal outing of family and friends, even though it appears to be winter.

Many real photo postcards, but few stereo cards of Ozarks scenes show up in antique shows or online. George Sittler had a thriving commercial photography studio in Springfield until his death in 1887. A story in the Wichita Eagle (September 24, 1887) recounted the circumstances of his demise under the headline “Death From A Trivial Cause.” In part the article read: “Visiting Perry Cave, (Percy’s Cave?) which had been newly illuminated with electric lights, the photographer collided against a stalactite, inflicting a bruise to which little attention was paid.” The next day, he passed out and died from the contusion.

Sittler’s widow Lizzie, also a photographer, continued to operate the studio.

James Fork of the White and all our books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. We’ll let you know when Lover’s Leap Legends is published

James Fork of the White – Finalist in National Book Award Competition

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Jun 222019
 

We are excited to announce that James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River has earned national recognition! We recently received notice that our book is a finalist in the Regional Non-Fiction category of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the world’s largest not-for-profit book award program for independent publishers. These awards are judged by leaders of the book publishing industry including many with long careers at major publishing houses.

 

 

 

 

 

James Fork of the White’s 352 pages describe a celebrated Ozark float stream, which has endured challenges as Springfield, Missouri, the largest city in the Ozarks, is within its watershed. Research for this book included  exploration along back roads, feeder creeks, mill sites, fishing hot spots and flating past towering bluffs. The James is a classic Ozark stream that just happens to course through a major metropolitan area. Lessons learned along its length and through its watershed will apply to other streams as they too face the pressures of increased usage.

Even though transformed and changing, the James is in many places still scenic; where it lacks wilderness esthetics, its history remains intriguing.

Leland and I have collaborated on a dozen books on the Ozarks or pop culture. Our 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.

Our next book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, will be published in February 2020. For the past three years, we have delved deeply into a remarkable sub-genre of legend and lore (“fakelore” some call it) tracing the source of the apocryphal stories attached to some of our most scenic landscape. In 352 pages with hundreds of color images (contemporary photographs as well as vintage images), we track these tales across America and to far flung precipices from Guam to Spain and points in between.

James Fork of the White and all our books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. We’ll let you know when Lover’s Leap Legends is published

Gentry Cave in Stone County

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Jun 052019
 

Real photo postcard by Galena photographer, D. F. Fox.

Gentry Cave, a remote cave—on private land and hard to get to—three miles south of Galena in Stone County, was described by Louella Agnes Owen in Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills (1898). Hiking through the woods after the mail coach’s wheel broke, the intrepid lady cave explorer found the “broken” landscape captivating:

“The topography was . . . very beautiful with the dense forest lighted by the slanting yellow rays of the afternoon sun. The way leads up to the “ridge road” which is at length abandoned for no road at all and descending through the forest, more than half the distance down to the James River flowing at the base of the hill, we come suddenly in view of the cave entrance, which is probably one of the most magnificent pieces of natural architecture ever seen.”

From James Fork of the White: “She found the cave interior worth the walk but does not mention the abundance of bat guano that would later provide the basis for an unusual industry. During the lean Depression years, one C. L. Weekly and two hires shoveled tons of dried bat manure into hundred-pound bags and shipped it off to be used for greenhouse fertilizer. He got $35 a ton. “

The commercial exploitation of bat guano was also the first impetus for the development of Marvel Cave, which became the centerpiece of a much later tourist attraction in Stone County—Silver Dollar City.

In Caves of Missouri (1956), J Harlan Bretz discusses Gentry Cave’s geology: “A rock shelter at Camp Ramona, 85 feet below cliff top and 50 feet above James River contains four of the five entrances to this joint-controlled cave system. Words are useless in describing the detailed interaction of passages; the cave pattern is too complicated. … One place in the cave showed cherty gravel, but there is no other evidence for vadose occupation of this splendid phreatic cave system. No red clay remnants and very little dripstone were seen anywhere in the cave.”

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

Invasive Species Lurking near Lake of the Ozarks

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May 102019
 

Lake Expo recently published an interesting article on three invasive species that could have a drastic effect on Lake of the Ozarks. “Lake Invaders! 3 Species That Lurk Nearby and How We can Protect Lake of the Ozarks” specifically points out a plant, a mussell and a fish and describes clearly what threat they pose to the native species and the new evnironment they find themselves in.

  • Hydrilla is an invasive plant from areas around India.
  • Zebra Mussels are native to Europe and Asia, but arrived in North American waterways in the 1980s.
  • Silver Carp are one of several Asian carp species in the state, are notorious for their unusual behavior when they get startled. They jump out of the water.

Read the whole story of how Lake of the Ozarks was created in Damming the Osage.  All Lens & Pen books are available on this site, at Barnes & Noble, and on amazon.com

 

 

Bathing At Camp Clark (Galena)

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May 082019
 

Promotional postcard with handwritten message. Postmarked “Galena Mar 1 10 AM 1910”

We recently acquired this gem of an image of summer play a century ago at Camp Clark in Galena (not the Missouri National Guard base near Nevada!). It is addressed to Miss Nettie M. McComb, Lamar, Mo who apparently had vacationed the previous year at Camp Clark. Rather than pay for a real photo postcard from local photographer George Hall, the owners pasted a snapshot on a blank Postal Card and handwrote their ‘pitch’ to customers from the preceding summer:

“Feb 28, 1910. Dear Friend: We remember how well you enjoyed your outing with us last year so we send you this card to remind you of Camp Clark, trusting that it will stimulate you to get up a party of your friends and come down and camp with us again this year. Your friends, Mr. or Mrs. A.L. McQuary”

A June 1913 newspaper ad for the “well known Camp Clark” assured readers: “Only people of good morals are accepted. It is a beautiful mountain camp on the James river, with pure air, grand scenery and fine spring water. A fine place for ladies to boat, bathe, fish and recreate.” All the Galena resorts pitched the idea that women were welcome—camping, fishing and floating were not male-only, stag affairs.

Dr. A. L. McQuary, former traveling evangelist who also prescribed eyeglasses, owned the resort, consisting of a set of bungalows and tents on a hill overlooking the James. He had been a farmer, run a saddlery business, and within a few years of moving to Galena in 1908, became the county collector.

 

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

How Did Missouri Choose its Capitol? From Humble Beginnings

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Apr 212019
 

As Cole County, home of our state capitol, and the state of Missouri approach their 200th year, the Jefferson City News Tribune (April 21) has posted an interesting article about the origins of our state capitol and Cole County.

Steel engraving of Missouri’s second capitol from an 1852 Meyers’ Universum, published in Germany. (and page 292, Damming the Osage)

As part of the congressional legislation to establish Missouri as a state, a commission was created to find a suitable site for the State Capital. Jesse Boone of Montgomery County, John White of Pike County, Robert Watson of New Madrid, and John Thornton of Howard County were appointed commissioners to locate this site. With the Missouri River running across the center of the state, this was the most logical choice, and the commission was directed to choose a site within 40 miles of the mouth of the Osage River. Since rivers were the maritime highways to get across Missouri, this made the most sense.

In Damming the Osage, we delved briefly into the role that river played in the establishment of the newly carved out state of Missouri and the creation of its capitol. See our earlier blog post on the subject as well.

The Dam Across The Meramec Spring

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Apr 092019
 

Real photo postcard. Postmarked Jul 2, 1929

This is a relatively late real photo postcard. By the late 1920s much less detailed printed postcards had begun to usurp the market of the more detailed real photo cards, to the disbenefit of local photographers who produced the real photo cards in their darkrooms.

Meramec Springs, six miles from St. James, Missouri, in Phelps County, has the seventh largest flow of Missouri springs. The average from 1922-1929 listed in The Large Springs of Missouri (1944) was 96,300,000. Both its beauty and historical utilization make it a popular park today. Like many of Missouri’s major springs it was preserved as a state park after earlier industrial utilization. Today’s peaceful setting is a stark contrast to the industrial beehive that once operated here. The spring was dammed to provide waterpower for the extraction of iron ore from hematite. Relics of the iron works active from 1826-1877 are park features. That nature can be restored in this way is hopeful. Missouri State Parks, a Division of the Department of Natural Resources, has been a national leader in acquiring and protecting exquisite natural resources like these great springs.

“The clear water bubbling from the basic and rushing over the falls, under an arch bridge, and down the spring branch, adds to the picturesque charm of the valley and its surrounding wooded hills … At times during the period 1826 to 1877, water power was developed at the spring to serve the Meramec iron works which exploited a deposit of hematite iron ore that had been found at the surface about a half mile west of the spring. … The ruins of the old blast furnace and the remains of the chimneys of the forest still stand in a broad, shaded park beside the spring branch. Picknickers and visitors to the spring enjoy the beautiful natural setting which surrounds these vestiges of one of Missouri’s early mining communicates.”

The Large Springs of Missouri by H. C. Beckman and N. S. Hinchey, 1944

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

Outlaws in the Ozarks and Irish Wilderness

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Mar 282019
 

My Irish Wilderness Google alerts delivered to my inbox an article about the recent meeting of the Oregon County Historical Society in Thayer.  Members discussed “Ozarks Outlaws and Gangsters.”

“Vice President Mike Crawford discussed property in the Irish Wilderness that was rumored to have been visited and traveled through by Jesse and Frank James.”

Yes, “The Irish” remains to this day a place of mystery, curiosity, and respite from the modern world!

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

The Mysterious Irish Wilderness – Rural Missouri March issue

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Mar 242019
 

In recognition of everyone’s favorite saint–Patrick, the March issue of Rural Missouri carries a full page article (note – a full page in Rural Missouri is a big page at 10 x 14″) on “The Mysterious Irish Wilderness.” Jim McCarty weaves together the known history of its origin, its inclusion in the National Wilderness system in 1984, with a useful guide to trails for today’s hikers and campers. Jim also includes a list of all of Missouri’s designated wilderness areas (8 in all including “The Irish”) – from the smallest, Rock Pile Mountain in the St. Francois Mountains to the largest, Hercules-Glades in southwest Misosuri.

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