FIRST Lead Mine in Missouri was on the James River

 James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 062023
 

Lead mine along Pearson Creek, circa 1900. Commercial extraction of lead here began in the 1840s and ended around 1920. Remnants of lead diggings can be seen in the hills along lower Pearson Creek.

In Schoolcraft’s 1819 account, A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri, he wrote, “On the immediate banks of James River are situated some valuable lead mines, which have been known to the Osage Indians and to some White River hunters, for many years.”

The young New York explorer repeatedly expressed astonishment at the clarity of Ozark streams. At his James River camp at the lead mine he observed lumps of ore “through the water, which is very clear and transparent.” Other Ozark regions had much vaster commercial lead deposits. These diggings along the James River left unsightly holes and the potential for lead contamination.

Dr. Robert T. Pavlowsky and his associates and students at Missouri State University’s Ozark Environmental and Water Resources Institute have investigated the effect of these old mines on water quality. They found lead contamination from mine waste has been stored in alluvial deposits of floodplains. Lead that washed into streams is now embedded in sediments in Pearson Creek and the James River. It will eventually degrade, but there is a danger if channel instability uncovers this mining-related metal contamination.

 

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

Evolution of Ozark Bridges

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 272023
 

Real photo postcard, 1920s, Ozark, Missouri. Wooden covered bridges were never common and very few survive. Iron bridges were abundant and with maintenance, many remain in use today.

The logo of the City of Ozark features the 1922 iron bridge under which flows the Finley River and the motto of the growing community is “Bridging strong tradition with bright futures.”

The flood of July 9, 1909 was the greatest on record (although records may be updated when the floods of the last few years are counted). Soon after this photograph was taken the covered bridge floated off its piers and crashed into the railroad bridge visible downstream.

The Christian County court advertised for bids for a replacement just five days after it washed away. That month they contracted with the Canton (Ohio) Bridge Company to build a metal span for $3,648.

Covered bridges evoke the past even more than old metal truss bridges. The popular belief that they were constructed to keep from spooking horses may have some validity, but primarily their enclosure was to protect the wood trusses from the elements. Few have survived anyway. Only four remain in Missouri.

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 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.

Springfield’s Sequiota Park, once a Fish Hatchery

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 012023
 

Domino Danzero photograph, circa 1922, of his family picnicking at Sequiota Park. In spite of changes in name, ownership, and utilization, the cave and spring at Sequiota Park still retain a natural ambience that visitors find picturesque.

In 2011 the Springfield-Greene County Park Board held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the completion of a $1.8 million “facelift to the much-needed natural water environment of Sequiota Park.” Considering the variety and intensity of utilizations of the place over the last century, that expenditure seems justified.

Fisher Cave, as the larger cave on the property was originally known, was bought in 1913 for $10,000 by H. E. Peterson, who renamed it Sequiota, which he claimed was an Indian word. The Frisco line ran a motor car service to what they called Se-qui-o-ta Park. Springfieldians flocked to picnic, fish in the small lake, and take boat rides in the cave whose water level was raised by a four-foot dam. More than a thousand feet can be viewed by boat. Cave explorers have mapped another 1,600 feet of passages.

The Missouri State Fish Commission bought the property in 1920 for $23,000 and used the strong spring that flowed from the cave to create a fish hatchery. Both smallmouth bass and rainbow trout were raised. When Table Rock Dam was completed and its discharges proved too cold for native fish, the Shepherd of the Hills Trout Hatchery was built below the dam. Sequiota’s hatchery equipment and manager went south in 1959 to the new facility at Branson. Springfield was deeded the property. It has continued to attract crowds, although boat tours of the main cave are limited and seasonal to protect hibernating endangered gray bats.

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

THE JAMES: TRANSFORMATION OF AN OZARK RIVER

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
May 072023
 

Printed postcard, 1907. The genesis of the square-ended (and, as above, sometimes pointed), flat bottomed boats specifically for commercial floating on the James and White rivers is poorly documented. Many theories have been advanced as to how they were developed and how they came to be called “johnboats.”

We chose to profile the James River in a 352-page all color book because its watershed contains the largest town in the Ozarks, several impoundments, and the region’s most famous and oldest tourist destination: The Shepherd of the Hills Country now known as Branson.

Each phase of development has in varying degrees impacted the next. The resulting culture is a product of art, literature, technology, commerce, national trends, and politics, intersecting with each other and the region’s own natural resources. It’s a compelling and complicated tale. The messages are applicable to the entire Ozarks and even beyond. Perhaps the most intriguing transformation is the change from free-flowing river to reservoirs.

Today, suburban Springfieldians in canoes floating the James often take out at Galena where the river becomes a lake. In the pre-Table Rock Dam 1930s, outfitters like the Galena Boat Co. provided boats for 75¢ per day, tents 75¢, folding chairs 10¢, and guides $3.00, for a downstream adventure that attracted sportsmen and sportswomen from across the nation. Their brochure advertised: “The trip from Galena to Branson may be made in five days if but few stops are made, but it would be more enjoyable to allow a week if possible – floating leisurely along on clear, cool waters that rush through small necks, gush over rocky shoals, and simmer into large, gleaming, lazy pools. “

Table Rock Lake favored largemouth bass over smallmouth and motorboats replaced poled johnboats. Because of the new reservoir’s proximity to an established tourist attraction, and its deep, clear waters, it became the most visited of the Corps of Engineers White River projects. There is a forgotten history to this impoundment. Shortly after Empire District Electric closed Powersite Dam, they announced they would build a larger dam at Table Rock. Lake Taneycomo became such a tourist draw the business community rejoiced. When the federal government took over building high dams, supporters altered their advocacy of private hydro-power to match the Corps’ flood control justification. James Fork of the White chronicles such environmental changes and how our perceptions of, and interaction with nature adjust to these transformations. The story of this major Ozark stream is an ongoing saga, its ending unwritten.

 

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. 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.

OZARKS TOURISM OF THE 1940S CAPTURED ON CLOTH

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
Apr 052023
 

Souvenir cotton card table cover designed and printed by Steve Miller, 1940s.

Artist Steve Miller created most of Jim Owen’s advertising. He also designed the logo for an Owen dairy milk bottle which is today a pricey collector’s item. Miller was from Kirksville and after teaching in Mexico and Columbia, Missouri, became enamored with the Ozarks, setting up shop in Branson in 1941. Probably the card table sized cloth map, depicting the rustic recreational attractions of the Shepherd of the Hills Country, is from the ‘40s. We’ve found it printed in both red and blue.

Miller’s hillbilly motifs are rendered with the graphic sophistication of a New Yorker cartoonist. More than any artifact in our collection it this textile illustrates the connectivity of the various country attractions of early Branson. The place’s rusticity is artfully depicted. Miller was a fan of days and ways gone by but had a modern design flare. Cartooning gave the old-time attractions a pop culture, post-War look. “Nostalgia Heightens Interest in Ozarks” was the headline of a 1972 Springfield News-Leader article about a speech given by Miller, then the artist-in-residence at the School of the Ozarks.

Miller was mindful of the region’s traditional image. In 1949, he created the giant Nativity scene still used at Christmas on the bluff across Lake Taneycomo from downtown Branson. He joined the staff at the School (now College) of the Ozarks in 1962 where he taught, and curated the Ralph Foster collection of Ozarks artifacts and firearms. His works permeate print media of the region. He died in 1972, survived by wife, a son, and a daughter.

The tablecloth illustration is from See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, an all color book of advertisements and souvenirs depicting early Ozarks tourism promotions and the image it created for the region. The book provides rich images and a unique aspect of history of Shepherd of the Hills Country, Eureka Springs, the Big Springs Country, Lake of the Ozarks, and more recent developments in this unique region – to answer the question: “What lured generations of travelers to the Ozarks?”

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $12.50 (half the original price of $24.95), postage paid. See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image is a  96-page all color, hardbound book.

 

CAUGHT AT OSCEOLA MO – Spoonbill / Paddlefish

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
Mar 042023
 

Paddlefish grow big and photogenic. This late real photo postcard was not mailed, so there’s no postmark—possibly 1950s?

On the back of the low-contrast, rather unfocused postcard is a discussion of the edibility of the “spoonbill catfish,” written in blue ballpoint: “Most people eat them and say they are as good as any other fish—but some say they aren’t fit to eat and give them away. We never eat any so don’t know.” The writer explained, “the bill is about the size of a boat paddle.”

In fact, the more common name for these large plankton filter feeders is paddlefish. Their flesh is quite good, and their eggs are a decent substitute for caviar from sturgeon. In Missouri it’s illegal to transport or sell paddlefish eggs, however. Regulations vary from state to state. There is a legal commercial fishery for paddlefish on the Mississippi River.

Once a low hydroelectric dam at Osceola concentrated the spawning run of paddlefish. Before Truman Dam, the best spawning riffles for the paddlefish were between Osceola and Lake of the Ozarks. Truman Dam now thwarts the spawning run and has covered their opportunity for natural reproduction in Missouri. The Conservation Department maintains the population by raising them in hatcheries. Today artificially raised paddlefish are released into the reservoirs for the benefit of snaggers. Snagging with big treble hooks is the only way they can be taken. You can’t bait a hook with tiny zooplankton.

As beluga sturgeon are now a threatened species, an illegal trade in paddlefish eggs has developed. Poachers with Russian names have been arrested for smuggling paddlefish eggs and the caviar made from them. Their caviar sells for about $250 a pound. Mature females often carry 20 pounds of eggs (roe).

 

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. Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, a 304-page color-illustrated book, tells the dramatic saga of human ambition pitted against natural limitations and forces beyond man’s control.

UP SOUTH IN THE OZARKS – Sampling the cultural DNA of a legendary region

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 032023
 

Brooks Blevins lectures frequently after the publication of his many studies of the Ozarks.

5-Star Review of Brooks Blevins new book by Leland Payton

National and regional identities may not have disappeared but what defines a people and their relationship with place has undergone evolution. Colorful identities are challenged by the homogenization of modernization. In rural regions, more than in urban, lifestyle relates more to geographic specificities. A rural place’s reputation may not have been created by—or accurately reflect the perceptions of, its natives. Academic studies of the Ozarks are scarce compared to other regions of the U.S. Tourism and popular culture have largely shaped its image, but not always falsely, Blevins concedes.

Brooks Blevins’ latest take is Up South in the Ozarks. Subtitled, Dispatches from the Margins, Blevins challenges the overall accuracy of the place’s most dominant symbol, the hillbilly, but acknowledges that the definition of a region needs to account for its clichés. Curiously, many Ozarkers accept cartoonish rustic depictions. Professor Blevins melds academic expertise from many disciplines— an appreciation for folklore, familiarity with both literature and journalism—with the personal, insightful observations of a native son. His encyclopedic geographic and historical knowledge is delivered with humor and a talent for metaphor. Throughout he contrasts and compares this Midwestern river-cut uplifted plateau with both the Deep South and the Appalachian Mountains.

Missionaries and writers descended on the southern highlands of Appalachia before they came to save souls or describe the more isolated Ozarks. In the chapter, “A Time Zone Away and a Generation Behind,” he analogizes the Ozarks to a younger sibling: “You were never first, never original, never completely yourself. Even at school, your teachers knew you as your big brother’s little brother. If that’s your story, you know how the Ozarks feels.”

His chapter, “The South According to Andy,” makes the case that the 1960s TV show set in a fictional mountain south small town was a portrait well received by Ozarkers: “Andy’s South was not the South. It was a South. … It was a projection of something quite southern, even if not a complete portrait of the South.”

Dr. Blevins doesn’t idealize the Ozarks. He confronts the idea that the mountain south was exempt from the past racial prejudices that characterize the Deep South. In “Revisiting Race Relations in the Upland South,” he admits his earlier position based on that premise was wrong: “But the equation of a small Black population with a comparative degree of racial harmony has not always appeared so self-evident to scholars and observers of the South.” He follows facts down unmapped, rocky trails no matter where they lead.

A generational lag in scholarship he believes may be closing: “In 2010, Missouri State University established the region’s first Ozarks Studies minor for undergraduates. Five years later, the University of Arkansas Press launched a monograph series in Ozarks Studies. (They published this book). We may never be first in the Ozarks, but we get around to it eventually. Such is the life of a regional little sibling.”  Blevins is on the board of the Ozarks Studies Institute, an initiative of the Missouri State University Libraries. Dr. Blevins also teaches classes on Ozark history at MSU.

Up South in the Ozarks seeks the nuanced realities of a large, misunderstood region that is paradoxically both romanticized and maligned. Brooks Blevins cherishes the Ozarks and believes its story is worthy of an honest telling, quirky, droll, and marginal as its realities often are.

Available from the University of Arkansas Press, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble.

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