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.

Joseph W. McClurg, 19th Governor of Missouri

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
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 on the Osage

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
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.

Lake of the Ozarks’ Lover’s Leap at Junction of Niangua and Osage Rivers

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Oct 162018
 

Real photo postcard, probably 1940s

Lover’s Leap on the Osage River was a cliff near Linn Creek, about which J. W. Vincent, editor of the local paper The Linn Creek Reveille, penned a fanciful tale of a suicidal Indian maiden. Virtually every declivity more than 25 feet high in the Mississippi River valley had a similar legend attached to it. When Lake of the Ozarks filled in 1931, the name stayed but the jump got shorter and the landing in water became more survivable. The little creature poised on the rocks in disregard of its safety appears to be some species of dog.

This site has been popular with postcard photographers and there are numerous versions, both real photo postcards and printed linens.

Today the knob where the dog sits has broken off and the site has grown up in brush. Nevertheless, it’s a well-known overlook; the trash indicates it’s a popular party spot. Recently it became a set for Netflix series Ozark.

This locaton and Virgin Bluff on the James River were among the sources of inspiration for our new project, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco. Lens & Pen books are available on this site, amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Lake of the Ozarks Landmark appears in Netflix Series

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Sep 102018
 

Linen postcard, Lover’s Leap at Lake of the Ozarks, 1940s.

Season 2 of the Netflix streaming series, Ozark, dropped August 31. In Season 1, a few establishing shots were grabbed at Lake of the Ozarks, but the series itself was filmed in Georgia thanks to that state’s generous tax credits for filmmakers. To our utter amazement, the last scene of that first episode showed Marty Byrde’s (Jason Bateman) first sight of the Lake at a spot we recognized as Lover’s Leap, a precipitous bluff near the drowned town of Linn Creek. J. W. Vincent, editor of the Linn Creek Reveille, included his version of the tale that gave the spot its name in his  1913 booklet, Tales of the Ozarks. Winona states she “will die rather than be false to her lover” before leaping off the cliff.

Lover’s Leaps on the Osage and the James rivers got us interested in the subject. Then we ran across Mark Twain’s satiric comments on the fate of Winona and the legend of Maiden Rock (Wisconsin). “There are fifty Lover’s Leaps along the Mississippi from whose summit disappointed Indian girls have jumped but this is the only jump in the lot that turned out the right and satisfactory way.” That got us working on our new project, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Te of Waco.

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

Why would a town up and move?

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Jun 022018
 

A good question. One asked and answered in a recent article by The Buffalo Reflex – because of dams built on the rivers that created lakes that swallowed the townsite. It’s as simple and complex and painful to those forced to move as that.

View of Bagnell Dam under construction

This first installment tells the story of Linn Creek on the Osage River, which we covered extensively in Damming the Osage.

The next installment will cover the move of Forsyth from the mouth of Swan Creek on the White River to a high bluff above what became the upper reaches of Bull Shoals Reservoir.

On our Damming the Osage blog, we posted a number of entries on Linn Creek.  Here are just a few:

Steamboat’s A-comin’! The Ruth at Linn Creek

Old Linn Creek 1909 – before Bagnell Dam

Old Linn Creek – flooded by the Osage

Steamboat landing in Linn Creek, 1911

Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir is available on this website, amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.