Younger’s Bluff at Monegaw, real photo postcard.
Youngers Lookout is an often-photographed feature of the Monegaw Springs area.
Cole Younger, the last surviving member of the James-Younger Gang, is said to have had his picture taken here in the early 1900s after his release from a Minnesota prison. The attachment of his name to this bluff may date from that event and not the gunfight of 1874 with Pinkerton agents, which occurred some three miles away.
Known as the Rosco Gun Battle, one Younger and two Pinkerton detectives were killed. Two monuments mark the spot along the lonely St. Clair County road where it occurred.
In 1897, Cole Younger, serving life with brother Jim in a Minnesota prison after the disastrous 1876 Northfield bank robbery that finished the James-Younger gang, wrote a sentimental poem:
‘Tis twenty years and more, Jim
Since we breathed the air of home.
Or gazed upon the hills and vales
We loved to oft to roam . . .
One grim old cliff I have in mind
That stands majestic, grand,
While far below the fair Osage
Sweeps o’er her silver sand.
There countless names are carved with ours
Where we have stood with awe
And gazed upon its marble face,
Near dear old Monegaw!
Many names of vacationers are carved into the sandstone bluffs along the Osage. We’ve looked, but never found any of the Youngers’ names.
From Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. 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.