On the front of the card is written “Scene in the Ozarks.” On the back is printed “Photo by Ayers, Neosho, Mo.”
On the cliff wall along a dirt road running along an unnamed Ozark river has been painted “Chesterfield Cigarettes.” At the end of the dirt road, you can barely make out an iron bridge spanning the river. Commercial graffiti like this is uncommon. Billboards sprang up in the 1930s along well-traveled highways but weren’t the kind of strenuous objections to debasing scenic views as there was back East. Occasionally, letters to the editor raised esthetic concerns but in New England states anti-billboard forces have gone farther, getting severe restrictions on outdoor advertising. The Federal Highway Beautification Act required states to maintain “effective control” of outdoor advertising, but even these rules are less restrictive than the regulations of Vermont and New Hampshire. Today, cliff faces like this are more likely to display spray-painted bad art and obscenities than product advertising.
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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.)
Leland, at the far foot of the trail in Cathedral Cave, before you turn to walk up the ramp to the Cathedral high on the left hand wall, was a faint image which read “See Fisher Cave and second line “Meramec State Park.” It was there when the property was opened as a state park in 1982. Who put it there, or when are not known.
This is interesting because Lester Dill showed Fisher Cave from 1927 to 1932. When FDR was elected in 1932, Dill’s contract to manage and show the cave (a political perk to his father, Thomas Benton Dill who was park superintendent) came to an end; this was the reason he purchased any d opened Meramec Caverns in 1933. Cathedral Cave was known as early as 1919, located on a farm adjacent to Onondaga Cave, which was a train destination show cave as early as the 1904 World’s Fair. It was commercialized about 1930, by then owner Timmerman Neilsen and manager Al Keber.
Was this in-cave billboard inspired or placed by Dill concurrent with his tenure at Fisher as advertisement for his Franklin County enterprise and with the blessing of Neilsen? Did it show up after 1953, when Dill and Lyman Riley purchased Onondaga, as a ‘instant historical artifact’, similar to the Meramec Caverns pendulum, indicating “Beneath this spot lies the center of the earth”? Cathedral Cave was shown as a wild cave in the early 1930s, but was abandoned until 1973. Between 1973 and 1976, it was re-commercialized with fluorescent light fixtures and a concrete trail by Dill, in commemoration of the bicentennial with the Cathedral Formation renamed the Liberty Bell.
No one quite knows, (and my husband was naturalist there from 1984-2003, so it’s not for lack of mining documents and people’s memories) but it’s probably one of the most obscure “natural Ozark billboards” I am aware of.
Thanks, Jo … your comment is super interesting. We’re delighted our post triggered this piece of information. These old real photo postcards are incredible sources of authentic history. The next generation of postcards (printed postcards) are basically worthless for historical purposes.