WHAT A COMBINATION—PHOTO GALLERY AND BUTCHER SHOP!

 Damming the Osage, Lens & Pen Press, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 032022
 

Cabinet card, Linn Creek, Missouri, circa 1890. F. Lloyd, photographer.

Young Sam Clemens grew up in a bigger Missouri river town than Linn Creek, but this photograph preserves a scene not unlike those Mark Twain described of his Hannibal childhood. Linn Creek on the Osage River would be drowned by Lake of the Ozarks in 1931 but this insane image—three Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn types on a steer in front of The Combination Meat Market and Picture Gallery, suggests it was not unlike the great writer’s hometown, a place populated by high-spirited folks with a sense of humor.

Once the county seat of Camden County, Linn Creek was a lively steamboat landing 31 miles upstream from where Bagnell Dam would be built in 1929. A merchant advertised in 1848 three steamships had delivered “One Thousand Sacks G. A. Salt, 150 Bags Rio Coffee and 70 Barrels of Rectified Whiskey.”  That confirms what everyone knows—frontier Ozarkers drank a lot of whiskey. It also challenges several other assumptions. Everyone in the Ozarks wasn’t a moonshiner making their own booze.  And the region wasn’t as isolated as is often assumed. Goods were coming in from far away.

Wish we had acquired this image some years ago when we published Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, which had extensive coverage of the drowned town. Leland’s grandmother (whom he never knew) was born in old Linn Creek. Perhaps she bought some pork chops at the combination establishment after having her portrait taken by F. Lloyd, about whom we could find no information.

 

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.

Legendary Ha Ha Tonka “Castle”

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Jan 262022
 

Robert M. Snyder engaged the services of a Kansas City architectural firm, A. Van Brunt and Brother, to design a spacious residence and complex of supporting structures. Like Snyder, Adriance Van Brunt had come to Kansas City around 1880 and with his brother John enjoyed rapid success. He was a believer in the City Beautiful Movement and for a decade was a member of the Board of Park Commissioners. This outlook and experiences made him a singular architect to transform wild Ha Ha Tonka into the “gentleman’s estate” the senior Snyder desired.

From Ha Ha Tonka State Park History: He envisioned a European-style castle with 60 rooms and a center atrium rising three and one-half stories to a skylight. He also planned a water tower, greenhouses and stables. The materials were extracted from the area, with sandstone quarried nearby and transported by a mule-drawn wagon and miniature railroad.

Construction of his dream home in the Ozarks began in 1905. Robert M. Snyder was killed in a car accident in Kansas City in October of 1906 and it was left to his sons to complete. After his father’s untimely death, one of Robert Jr.’s duties was to dispose of the distant estate. Colonel Scott’s Carter’s Magazine article had already given it some status as a natural wonder, calling the place a park. With Herbert Hadley, the float-tripping progressive Republican as governor, it seemed that selling Ha Ha Tonka to the state might go easily. In 1909, a bill authorizing its purchase failed by one vote in the Missouri House. From then on Robert Snyder Jr. encountered years of frustration trying to facilitate an adequately compensated transfer to public ownership. In his booklet, Hahatonka in the Ozarks (1914), Snyder emphasized the place’s aesthetic and historic value. As much as he loved it, the family needed to sell it.

Bob Snyder, Jr. became an expert on early Missouri history and a collector of its literature.  He was passionately involved with the property he was trying to sell.

 

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.

 

Gentrification of an Outlaw Hangout on the Osage River

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Oct 102021
 

Club House, Monegaw Springs, real photo postcard by Becraft

Between bank, stage, and train robberies, the Younger Brothers’ gang found refuge and recreation in the rugged hills of the Osage. Grandfather Younger had settled here in the 1840s. Relatives and even former slaves of the family took pride in sheltering the outlaws. Frank and Jesse James on occasion joined the Youngers at the billiard table in the spacious hall of the log hotel at Monegaw Springs. The young men attended dances where they thrilled local girls with stories of their exploits on behalf of the vanquished.

In 1905 the old house and 300 acres were acquired by a group of Kansas City businessmen who created “The Monegaw Club.” The KC headquarters of the club were in the office of Mr. James B. Keister, 706 Bank of Commerce Building. The Henry County Democrat, August. 3, 1905 took several paragraphs from the Kansas City Journal description:

“The old log tavern on the crest of Mount Monegaw, now the property of the club, is one of the historic buildings of St. Clair county. The hotel was built in1854 by Thomas Estes and Harry Davis, both well known in the county at that time and still remembered. The building was originally intended for a hotel and since its erection has been conducted as such, with the exception of a short period during the war.

A fifteen foot veranda has been built around the old log hotel, which is being remodeled, retaining as much as possible its original rustic features—An up-to-date café and grill room will be one of the attractions at the club; other modern conveniences will be introduced. A pumping system, which required some skilled engineering, has been installed, and for the first time in the history of this ancient resort, the sulpher water is being pumped to the top of Monegaw hill. A bathhouse with sulpher plunge, sulpher baths, vapor baths and mud baths will be maintained.”

At the time it was built, the log hotel was said to be the largest log structure west of the Mississippi. Kansans burned the town during the Civil War, but spared the hotel. The old log hotel burned in 1926.

 

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.

Outlaw Geography and Their Poetry

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Sep 102021
 

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.

Joseph W. McClurg, 19th Governor of Missouri

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Aug 172021
 

Joseph McClurg was governor of Missouri from January 12, 1869 to January 4, 1871.

 

 

 

Joseph W. McClurg and partners grossed half-a-million dollars a year at their Linn Creek Big Store before the Civil War. The well-educated, dapper gentleman was a strong Union supporter. When hostilities erupted, rebels burned his store and warehouses.

After the War, McClurg was elected to Congress three times and governor once. Attempting to revive his store on the river in the 1870s, he found the new railroads made his steamboat-based enterprise obsolete. The soft-spoken, religious, teetotalling McClurg could be considered the most distinguished figure in early Osage valley history. Certainly, he was the only personage in the region photo­graphed by Mathew Brady.

 

 

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/buy-the-book/ for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

 

Steamboat J.R. Wells Unloading at Tuscumbia, Circa 1900

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Jul 222021
 

 

This stern-wheeler worked the river below Warsaw delivering farm produce and timber to a rail connection at Osage City, or St. Louis, returning with merchandise. Log books in the collection of the Miller County Museum and Historical Society enumerated its 1904 cargo:

“Here are items the Wells carried that year: 5,337 sacks of wheat, 2 tons hay, 305 head of cattle, 1,439 railroad ties, 445 head sheep, 2,587 hogs, 280 gallons wine and whiskey, 956 cases eggs, 134 coops of poultry, 14,122 pounds produce, 215,122 pounds farm machinery, 8,208 pounds bacon, 961 barrels salt, 16,484 pounds iron, 33 barrels oil, 33 tons coal, 128,403 pounds wire, 41,760 feet oak lumber, 20,000 pounds mill machinery, 123,177 feet pine lumber, 1,852 bunches shingles, 34,4060 pounds sewer pipe, 6 barrels lime, 124 barrels cement, 150 brick, 150,000 pounds clay or chalk, 756 sacks corn in ear, 620 bushels shelled corn and 140 passengers.”

The Miller County Historical Association has an interesting history of early navigation on the rivers on http://www.millercountymuseum.org/rivernav.html

 

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.

 

Steamboat J. R. Wells on the Osage

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Jun 112021
 

Steamboat J. R. Wells at Linn Creek, late 1800s

A few steamboats still operated on the lower Osage River in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Sometimes they carried excursion parties instead of cargo. Before the Civil War, “daring, reckless and adventurous men” ran far upstream in high water to sup­ply frontier settlements with necessities, returning to St. Louis with barrels of mast-fed hog hams, deer skins, and furs.

Built at Tuscumbia by Anchor Milling Company in 1897, the J.R. Wells steamboat was 110 feet long, with a 20-foot beam. With its barge, the Ida, also built by Anchor Milling, the Wells worked up and down the Osage for a couple of decades.

In 1919, the Wells was sold to a Missouri River operator. In 1920, it was crushed by ice floes and sank at Pelican Bend near St. Charles, Missouri.

 

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.

Early Party Barge on the Osage to Monegaw Springs

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May 132021
 

Real photo postcard by Thomas: “Excursion—Osceola to Monegaw. June 20 – 09”

Nearly a century before Lake of the Ozarks’ infamous Party Cove, people found entertainment on the free-flowing Osage. Small steamboats, some pushing barges, delivered large parties from Osceola to Monegaw Springs, eight miles upstream, after commercial river traffic had almost disappeared.

The effort to finance a railroad from Osceola to Monegaw Springs failed. Attempts to capitalize on Monegaw’s celebrated springs have been persistent, but largely unrewarded. Its geographic isolation has been problematic, and later public recognition that drinking spring water had no medicinal benefit sealed its fate.

Even if Monegaw ultimately fizzled as a spa and resort, it was clearly a fun place to visit in the early 1900s. Recreationalists back then dressed more formally but from what we understand alcoholic beverages were equally popular (some things don’t change).

 

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.

 

Lock & Dam No. 1 on the Lower Osage

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Apr 132021
 

1909 Construction photograph of Lock and Dam No. 1

In 1886, an Osage River Improvement Committee convened and, using Army Engineers plans, challenged Congress to make the river navigable clear to Kansas with a series of locks and dams. After delays, work on the first lock and dam began in September 1895 at Shipley Shoals then seven miles from the mouth of the Osage.

The pièce de résistance of the futile effort to render the Osage River navigable was Lock and Dam No. 1. In the twentieth century, Army Engineers became renowned for escalating the price of a dam after Congressional authorization and work had started. Underestimating construction costs has long been a skill of the Corps.

In 1891, Lock and Dam No. 1 was estimated to cost $187,244. By 1895, with the addition of Chanoine wickets to raise and lower water levels to keep from flooding farms upstream, a figure of $417,500 appeared in War Department documents. As this 1909 photograph shows, the project obviously took longer and cost more than had been stated in Corps of Engineers’ reports to Congress.

The impressive hunk of concrete and iron, 850 feet wide with a 40 by 220 foot lock, proved to be a mixed blessing. Upon completion in 1906, a 30-foot section washed away. The structure blocked barges, which were the most cost-effective river transportation.

In 2012, a drought lowered Osage River levels so much that the rotten remains of Lock & Dam No. 1 were exposed for all to see. Today it not only serves to block possible sturgeon and paddlefish migration to Osage River spawning beds, but every year or two someone drowns trying to navigate through it in high water.

 

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.

 

Giant Osage River Catfish

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Mar 232021
 

Photo by Becraft, Osceola, MO. 68 Pounds #25

On the first page of the first chapter in Damming the Osage, we wrote:

After being the subject of the real photo postcard, this sixty-eight-pound blue catfish likely became the blue plate special at an Osceola, Missouri café. Though not uncommon in the Osage River, big fish were newsworthy. Several hundred miles downstream and a decade earlier another huge catfish (a blue or a flathead) made the June 1, 1895, Jefferson City Daily Tribune:

“News has just been received here of the strange manner in which John Harnett an Osage River fisherman, lost his life by being drowned by a catfish weighing 105 pounds. No one witnessed the death struggle which occurred some twenty-five miles up the river, but the finding of Harnett’s body, a trot-line and the live fish attached thereto some hours after he was missed tells the story of how he lost his life. He had wrapped one end of the line around his hand and been jerked in the river and drowned by the struggles of the fish to free itself.”

This was a true Osage river monster cat, so big the men holding the staff supporting it had to stand on boxes to keep the tail off the ground. Times and the river’s ecology have changed.  The most recent headline-grabbing hefty fish pulled from the Osage was a 112-pound invasive black carp.

 

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/buy-the-book/ for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

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