River Guides at Owen’s Theater – near the end of the era

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 052022
 

Jim Owen leans jauntily on the truck (front row, right), with artist Steve Miller and Owen’s float-fishing guides in front of his Hillbilly Theater, 1940.

At the height of the float trip era, Jim Owen and his team gathered for a photo on Owen Company truck, in front of the Owen Hillbilly Theater, Branson venue for early moving pictures. Table Rock Dam would ultimately kill the famed Galena to Branson float, but floating is still alive and well on interior Ozark rivers when this photo was taken.

James Mason Owen was many things – twelve-time mayor of Branson, bank president, car dealer, restaurateur, movie theater owner, dairyman, fishing columnist, breeder of fox hounds, manufacturer of dog food, and publicity genius. Never was he accused of being an Arcadian. Cigar-chomping capitalist and master of mass media that he was, Owen had the good sense to recruit old time river men like Charley Barnes when he launched the Owen Boat Line.

Owen’s roster included many who had pioneered floating the James and White back in the days when city folks detrained at Galena. A jokester himself, Owen encouraged colorful rustic behavior that fulfilled visitors’ expectations of being escorted downstream by a tractable variety of hillbilly.

Today, canoes and kayaks have replaced wooden john boats and lighter, more functional gear has made camp set up easier. These quick and easy floats, unlike the leisurely floats on the White River or on the James from Galena to Branson, don’t require guide services or provide colorful local characters to entertain the visitors. Newer generations don’t know what they’re missing.

In his memoir, Ted Sare, a guide for the Owen Boat Line in the 1940s, praised the colorful entrepreneur:

“There was no better promoter of that than Jim Owen. He was an ex-newspaperman and knew the value of advertising and also knew how to reach the famous and important people, and he did. He had some of the biggest names in the country and a lot of Hollywood movie stars as his clientele. Jim did more than any other one man to put White River and Branson, Missouri on the map.”

Today, the Historic Owen Theatre is the official home of the Branson Regional Arts Council presenting amateur and professional level Broadway musicals and plays year-round.

Photo from James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, 352 pages with more than 400 color illustrations. 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.

 

“So long, free flowing White River!”

 James Fork of the White  No Responses »
Sep 072022
 

Dewey Short and other VIPs say goodbye to the free-flowing White River

Photograph by Townsend Godsey.  Congressman Dewey Short and unidentified colleagues looking at the White River. On the back is written, “Table Rock dam site 9-14-4″

Dewey appears to be pointing out the location where the long-delayed dam would be built. Only a month earlier the President had signed the Flood Control Act of 1941, which included both Table Rock and Bull Shoals. Headline of the October 11, 1952, Kansas City Times announced: “Start A Big Dam Barbecue And Music At Launching of 76-Million-Dollar Reservoir.” Mayor Claude Binkley of Branson remarked he had ‘hurried to the Ozarks twenty-six years ago’ to be here for the construction start.”

Although a Republican dedicated to smaller government (mostly), like most politicians the lure of bringing big buckets of federal money to his district was strong. Congressman Short did get the appropriations for Table Rock Dam flowing again. Construction got underway in 1954, and the White River was backed up behind a $65 million, 252-foot-high dam three miles above Table Rock in 1958. Dedication ceremonies were held on June 14, 1959, when the powerhouse was completed.

Short had been a fiery opponent of FDR’s New Deal except when the federal handout was in his district. Dewey self-identified as a “hillbilly.” The term better fit his bank-robbing brother, Leonard, who perished while on the lam.

 

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.

 

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.

Dinner Time On The James

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 082019
 

Stereo card stamped G.W. Sittler, 1880s.

Penciled on the back is the title, “Dinner time on the James.” Presumably this was an informal outing of family and friends, even though it appears to be winter.

Many real photo postcards, but few stereo cards of Ozarks scenes show up in antique shows or online. George Sittler had a thriving commercial photography studio in Springfield until his death in 1887. A story in the Wichita Eagle (September 24, 1887) recounted the circumstances of his demise under the headline “Death From A Trivial Cause.” In part the article read: “Visiting Perry Cave, (Percy’s Cave?) which had been newly illuminated with electric lights, the photographer collided against a stalactite, inflicting a bruise to which little attention was paid.” The next day, he passed out and died from the contusion.

Sittler’s widow Lizzie, also a photographer, continued to operate the studio.

James Fork of the White and all our books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. We’ll let you know when Lover’s Leap Legends is published

Gentry Cave in Stone County

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 052019
 

Real photo postcard by Galena photographer, D. F. Fox.

Gentry Cave, a remote cave—on private land and hard to get to—three miles south of Galena in Stone County, was described by Louella Agnes Owen in Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills (1898). Hiking through the woods after the mail coach’s wheel broke, the intrepid lady cave explorer found the “broken” landscape captivating:

“The topography was . . . very beautiful with the dense forest lighted by the slanting yellow rays of the afternoon sun. The way leads up to the “ridge road” which is at length abandoned for no road at all and descending through the forest, more than half the distance down to the James River flowing at the base of the hill, we come suddenly in view of the cave entrance, which is probably one of the most magnificent pieces of natural architecture ever seen.”

From James Fork of the White: “She found the cave interior worth the walk but does not mention the abundance of bat guano that would later provide the basis for an unusual industry. During the lean Depression years, one C. L. Weekly and two hires shoveled tons of dried bat manure into hundred-pound bags and shipped it off to be used for greenhouse fertilizer. He got $35 a ton. “

The commercial exploitation of bat guano was also the first impetus for the development of Marvel Cave, which became the centerpiece of a much later tourist attraction in Stone County—Silver Dollar City.

In Caves of Missouri (1956), J Harlan Bretz discusses Gentry Cave’s geology: “A rock shelter at Camp Ramona, 85 feet below cliff top and 50 feet above James River contains four of the five entrances to this joint-controlled cave system. Words are useless in describing the detailed interaction of passages; the cave pattern is too complicated. … One place in the cave showed cherty gravel, but there is no other evidence for vadose occupation of this splendid phreatic cave system. No red clay remnants and very little dripstone were seen anywhere in the cave.”

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

Bathing At Camp Clark (Galena)

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
May 082019
 

Promotional postcard with handwritten message. Postmarked “Galena Mar 1 10 AM 1910”

We recently acquired this gem of an image of summer play a century ago at Camp Clark in Galena (not the Missouri National Guard base near Nevada!). It is addressed to Miss Nettie M. McComb, Lamar, Mo who apparently had vacationed the previous year at Camp Clark. Rather than pay for a real photo postcard from local photographer George Hall, the owners pasted a snapshot on a blank Postal Card and handwrote their ‘pitch’ to customers from the preceding summer:

“Feb 28, 1910. Dear Friend: We remember how well you enjoyed your outing with us last year so we send you this card to remind you of Camp Clark, trusting that it will stimulate you to get up a party of your friends and come down and camp with us again this year. Your friends, Mr. or Mrs. A.L. McQuary”

A June 1913 newspaper ad for the “well known Camp Clark” assured readers: “Only people of good morals are accepted. It is a beautiful mountain camp on the James river, with pure air, grand scenery and fine spring water. A fine place for ladies to boat, bathe, fish and recreate.” All the Galena resorts pitched the idea that women were welcome—camping, fishing and floating were not male-only, stag affairs.

Dr. A. L. McQuary, former traveling evangelist who also prescribed eyeglasses, owned the resort, consisting of a set of bungalows and tents on a hill overlooking the James. He had been a farmer, run a saddlery business, and within a few years of moving to Galena in 1908, became the county collector.

 

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

McMurtry Spring – Head of Flat Creek

 Uncategorized  1 Response »
Feb 042019
 

Real photo postcard. Postmarked “Cassville, September 17 8 AM 1910.“ Hinchey Photo

We acquired this outstanding real photo postcard after the publication of James Fork of the White or it would have been a half-page illustration in our book. The front identifies the spring as being two-and-a-half miles south of Cassville, Mo. Like many real photo postcards of this era, it is exquisitely exposed and sharp-focus.

Flat Creek is the longest tributary of the James River. Access to it is limited and it isn’t much fished or floated compared to the James between Springfield and Galena. Quoting from our book on the James (page 94): “Cherokees rested here on their Trail of Tears journey, and it was a well-known camping spot for settlers coming to Cassville to trade. Missouri highway 37, which runs next to the spring, was once the Old Wire (telegraph) Road. Both sides in the Civil War traveled this road and watered their horses here.”

The little stone springhouse is still there, but the spring today is enclosed by a circular rock and concrete wall.

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.