On a recent trip to see flood-bloated, monstrous Truman Reservoir, bulging at its gates from this year’s rains, we stopped at Truman Visitor Center. There we found an art exhibit, which included a painting by E. Mike Parker, of a billboard Leland had photographed decades ago. The billboard is long gone, but some memories don’t fade.
The museum is professionally done and recent cadre of Corps staff are pretty enlightened about water resource projects and objective about their controversial aspects, even acknowledging that in today’s world Truman Reservoir would likely not be built.
Leland was one of the instigators (plaintiffs) of the failed lawsuit to stop construction of Harry S. Truman Dam on the upper Osage River. The sad story of the lawsuit is told in considerable detail—and we must confess with a partisan slant—in Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir.
At the time (early 1970s) Leland had a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop an exhibit entitled Missouri: A Portrait in Light and Sound. For this project, he photographed all regions of the state, including the Osage River basin. Driving the roads of Benton and Henry counties, he saw farms destined to go under the water, cemeteries that must be moved, and profound changes coming to a stable agricultural life. Not everyone was on board with the Chamber of Commerce.
(above and left) Hand-painted roadside billboards near Clinton, 1972. There were loud assertions that everybody in the Osage valley wanted Truman Dam completed, but anti-dam sentiments were not uncommon, just repressed and underreported.. page 221, Damming the Osage
From the beginning, the triumphant business community had ignored the feelings of farmers like W. R. Bataschelett whose poignant letter was published in the Clinton Daily Democrat on March 27, 1972:
I would like to know the reaction of Clinton businessmen, including the Democrat, if a government agency would come to them and say, we need your place of business for recreational purposes and we will give you so many dollars and expect you to vacate or we will condemn your property and will have to leave immediately. This is what farmers are told who will lose their homes and farms to Truman Dam. Their farming is a business just the same as Clinton businessmen.
About the cost of said dam that has already been paid out, would not the taxpayers be better by losing completely that 20% spent to date or spending 80% more trying to save the (above and left) already spent 20%? What is more important, a place to water ski, fish and boat or a farmer’s home and land?
For more interesting life-after-the-dam posts, check out our new website: hypercommon.com
Damming the Osage and all Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.