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.

1940s View from Table Rock – still no dam

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
Aug 102022
 

Into the 1940s, visitors continued to visit and pose for photographs on the flat rock above the White River valley – where there was still no sign of earth-moving equipment, much less a towering blockage to the stream.

That stretch of river was promoted as a dam site by Henry Doherty, Empire District Electric Company, even before Taneycomo, his first successful White River project, had finished filling.  Table Rock, described as “probably the most scenic spot in Taney County,” in a Springfield Republican article, Feb. 1922, would be the location of his next dam he announced. There he proposed the erection of a 200-foot-high dam, which “would create a lake 100 miles in length and extend up the James to Galena.”

A lot happened in America between 1922 and 1958 (a Great Depression, a World War, a New Deal, Korean war) when Table Rock Dam was finally completed. Even those averse to Corps of Engineers projects cannot doubt its engineers are well trained. Between 1929 and 1948, the Corps of Engineers completed surveys of 180 rivers in 176 separate reports and submitted them to Congress. Not only did Army personnel boat and wade streams, but they also consulted with private power companies, academics, and other agencies.

The federal government ultimately took dam building away from private companies in the late 1930s. World War II and then Korea delayed construction of many projects. Again, local dam advocates became nervous that the feds would repeat the stalling tactics of Empire District Electric. However, the once-dam-averse Army Corps of Engineers ultimately changed the free-flowing White River into a series of reservoirs.

 

From 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. Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

 

 

View from Table Rock – pre-dam, 1920s

 James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 082022
 

Real photo postcard, 1920s, by Payne Johnson, Branson Mo.

The white lettering on the card can be hard to read. It says, “Table Rock Dam will be built across the big sand bar.” And so -eventually – it was.

Most bluffs along Ozark rivers are named. Table Rock Bluff had a relatively flat top (hence the name). The spot was accessible by road and afforded an impressive view of the pre-dam river valley. Fro generations, a visit to this overlook was on many vacationers’ itinerary.

In 1922, Empire District Electric applied for and received a preliminary permit to build a large dam at Table Rock, five miles southwest of Hollister. World War I had concluded satisfactorily, and Americans were optimistic about the prospects of better living through technology.

Still, it would be thirty-six more years before the lower James River became the James River arm of Table Rock Lake. For decades locals anticipated seeing machinery below building a huge dam. That this didn’t occur frustrated dam supporters and led them to question if the utility really intended to proceed. During that time utility companies constructed three hydroelectric dams within the Osage River system after Powersite Dam (1911-1913). None of the much-publicized private projects in the White River basin would go forward.

From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, 352 pages with more than 400 color illustrations, which examines the entire watershed of the famed Ozark float stream, a tributary of the White River. Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. James Fork is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

Early View of White River Dam, aka Powersite Dam

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
Jan 132020
 

White River Dam, real photo postcard, Hall Photo Co., circa 1916

The first hydroelectric dam in the Ozarks was simply called the “White River Dam.” Soon after, the name was changed to Powersite Dam. A March 12, 1913 article in the Springfield Republican reported the Branson Club, a local business organization decided the name “Taneycomo” (derived from its location in Taney County Missouri) would attract tourists. They even compared the twenty-mile lake created by the run-of-the-river dam to Lake Como in the Swiss Alps.

Dam building on the White River was started in 1911 by St. Louis investors organized as the Ozark Power and Water Company. Henry L. Doherty and his gigantic Cities Service combine acquired it when the backers encountered financial difficulties. His utilities in southwest Missouri were branded Empire District Electric.

George Hall was an innovative photographer. A vertical, rather than horizontal, image with a small figure in the right-hand corner is a remarkable composition. His portrait of early tourism in the Branson/Galena area, aka Shepherd of the Hills Country, is unequaled. Over a couple of decades, he photographed politicians and local folks, important events and daily life, characters of legend and local fame—tourist sites and daily life. He printed postcards from his photographs and sold them locally. Real photo postcards are printed on sensitized photo postcard paper from the original negative of a large, roll film camera, creating a super sharp image.

 

Lens & Pen books are available on this website on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. Our most recent book is James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River.

See sample pages from our  forthcoming book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com Available in February.

POWERSITE DAM and Lake Taneycomo

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 252018
 

Powersite Dam went into service in 1913 on the White River near Forsyth, Missouri, the first hydroelectric dam in Missouri. Designed in 1911 by Nils F. Ambursen as the largest concrete buttress dam of its kind, the dam is still privately owned by the Empire District Electric Company.

Powersite was hardly a visual embodiment of modernism like the later high dams out West. It more resembled a big milldam. Its forebay was little more than a pool in the White River. As it was a run-of-the river dam, Lake Taneycomo’s shoreline fluctuated very little.

The narrow, twenty mile-long lake it created became regarded as part of nature, indistinguishable from the free-flowing river it replaced. A March 12, 1913 article in the Springfield Republican, “Lake Taneycomo Is Name Bestowed By Branson Club,” compared the lake to the more famous Lake Como in the Alps. The new lake “nestled among the bluffs of the beautiful Ozarks” was part of the White River, “which no more picturesque stream can be found.” The Branson Club created the name from Taney County Missouri.

Until Table Rock’s discharge of frigid water turned it into a trout environment, Taneycomo was popular with swimmers and bass fishermen. Rockaway Beach flourished as a summer resort from the 1920s through the ’50s, until Table Rock drastically changed the lake’s water temperature.

Some local promoters got it in their heads that the price of electricity near the plants would be so low that factories would automatically spring up. A headline in the Springfield Republican (November 18, 1911) proclaimed “Cotton Mills Will Come To White River: Dam Proposition Is to Furnish Power for Big Industries From New England.” None of this happened. Electric rates were not less close to the dam. Cotton production did not swell.

Adapted from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River

 

James Fork of the White is available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

Henry Doherty, Powersite Dam and the Empire District Electric Company

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jan 152018
 

Harnessing the power of moving water for profit and community betterment has been an impulse for many an entrepreneur. On the White River, the first dam to close the flow was #Powersite, a small, almost run-of-the-river, dam that held back enough water to ‘fatten up’ the river without drastically affecting the flow or habitat.

Financial overruns caused the initial backers to withdraw their support for building Powersite. Enter New York banker Henry #Doherty who was ‘collecting’ small power companies in southwest Missouri and consolidating them into what became Empire District Electric. He financed the construction of Powersite.

The dam closed in 1913 but White River waters remained warm allowing for fishing and swimming and water sports. The newly formed riverine lake was called #Taneycomo – some said it was a nod to beautiful Lake Como in northern Italy, but the accepted explanation is a mash up of Taney County Missouri. More than forty years later a much bigger dam, Table Rock, was built upstream bringing drastic changes to the #WhiteRiver, Lake Taneycomo and the James Fork of the White.

Like Bagnell Dam, Powersite Dam was started by men who soon encountered financial difficulties and sold out to bigger concerns. The St. Louis investors who organized the Ozark Power and Water Company engaged the Ambursen Hydraulic Construction Company of Boston to build it. Nils Ambursen, a Norwegian immigrant engineer, had designed a hollow cement slab and buttress structure used successfully elsewhere. Replacing the original backers was Wall Street accumulator of energy companies, Henry Latham Doherty. Doherty had already acquired a handful of small utility companies in southwest Missouri that were branded Empire District Electric Company. The White River operation kept its original name until being folded into the Empire group in 1927.

Cutline for this 1933 press photo reads “Col. And Mrs. Doherty watched happily a Christmas party which the Dohertys gave at Coral FLA.”

The next year Doherty organized the National Committee for Birthday Balls, which sponsored dances across the country to raise money for Franklin Roosevelt’s Warm Springs Foundation to treat victims of polio. The president had been paralyzed from the waist down himself with the disease since 1921.

Henry L. Doherty built his holding company Cities Service into a gigantic combination of all three sources of energy–gas, oil, and electricity. His charm and friendship with FDR kept him from many of the problems capitalists had during the New Deal.

From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River…

TABLE ROCK BLUFF 1940S BEFORE THE DAM

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 102017
 

 Photo from Table Rock Bluff, 1940s.  Still no dam.

Soon after the completion of Powersite Dam (1913) creating Lake Taneycomo, Empire District Electric announced that they would build a larger dam more than twenty miles upstream at Table Rock. However, Table Rock Dam was not built at Table Rock, but about two miles farther upstream on the White River. It was not built by Empire District Electric, but by the Army Corps of Engineers, at a site Corps engineers thought would be better from an engineering standpoint.
The federal government ultimately took dam building away from private companies in the late 1930s. World War II and then Korea delayed construction of many projects. Again, local dam advocates became nervous that the feds would repeat the stalling tactics of Empire District Electric. Construction finally kicked off in the early 1950s.

WHITE RIVER FLOODING 1927

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 092017
 
Although there are no big government dams on the James River, Table Rock Dam backs the lower James up almost to Galena. So we covered the genesis of the Table Rock project in our new book, James Fork of the White. There’s no denying that the White River is prone to flooding.  The Army Corps of Engineers originally had no faith that dams were a solution to overflows. That would change and much of the White River has been incorporated into a system of multipurpose dams.
Press photo of Forsythe in the 1927 flood taken from Shadow Rock
Rising in the Boston Mountains and flowing through a narrow valley, the White River would rise quickly and put buildings on low ground underwater. The Corps of Engineers’ solution protected most of Branson and Hollister from flooding but permanently submerged most of the agricultural land along the upper White River. Valuable farmland hundreds of miles downstream was protected from normal rises.
 
As these government dams were premised on flood control (power generation was an option), local advocates like the White River Boosters Association cried out to Congress for relief from floods, supporting the Corps of Engineers’ claims.
 
Felicity to the new patron of dams required a revised chant from the Missouri business community. When Empire District Electric was considering building Table Rock Dam factory creation was the mantra. Local supporters really didn’t care who built the dam, or why. They just wanted a nice lake, a bigger Taneycomo, at no cost to them.
Sample pages from James Fork of the White can be seen on www.beautifulozarks.com. The book will be available by the end of September. Our earlier river book, Damming the Osage, can be at seen www.dammingtheosage.com)

Lens & Press Blog Moving to Word Press

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 182017
 

We’re moving our Lens & Pen Press blog from Blogger to Word Press and will consolidate the two current blogs into one for our books–the Beautiful and Enduring Ozarks, the James Fork of the White (coming 2017), Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and See the Ozarks–and many other favorite topics of discussion. The archive of L&P posts is still available at http://lensandpen.blogspot.com/ The posts on our separate Damming the Osage website remain available at http://www.dammingtheosage.com/the-blog/

To bridge this move from one platform to another, below is the most recent (Blogger) post about Table Rock and the pre-dam White River landscape:

TABLE ROCK – BLUFF AND DAM

Shortly after Empire District Electric built Powersite Dam across the White River, creating Lake Taneycomo, the big electric company announced plans to build a 200-foot dam upriver at Table Rock Bluff.

“Table Rock Dam will be built across the big sandbar,” reads the handwritten caption.
Real photo postcard, 1920s, by Payne Johnson, Branson, Mo.

Most bluffs along Ozark rivers are named. Table Rock Bluff had a relatively flat top and was accessible by road. A visit to this overlook was on many vacationers’ itinerary.  For decades locals anticipated seeing machinery in the valley below building a huge dam.  That this never occurred frustrated dam supporters and led them to question if the utility really intended to proceed. They didn’t.

The Army Corps would build Table Rock Dam many years later but the Corps didn’t build it at Table Rock. They moved the location two miles upstream to a more stable geological site, but kept the name.  Table Rock Bluff remains a popular scenic overlook, but is now fenced for safety – unlike the past as shown here.

COMING IN 2017: JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE: Transformation of an Ozark River.

Sample pages from this new book can be seen at www.beautifulozarks.com

Our earlier ‘river book,’ DAMMING THE OSAGE, can be seen at www.dammingtheosage.com