Mt. Nebo Arkansas Lover’s Leap

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Aug 072019
 

Real photo postcard, “Looking north from Lovers Leap, Mt. Nebo, Ark. GNissom Photo.” Circa 1910.

This card is a little battered card with a corner missing, but it captures a pretty cool image. In the distant background is the Summit Park Hotel opened in 1889 by Captain Joseph Evans and the Mount Nebo Improvement Company. This luxury hotel catered to the upper class, and during the summer season as many as five thousand people lived or vacationed there. The hotel burned down in 1919.

One trail through Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Mena, Arkansas now bears the name Lover’s Leap Trail. We found little about the legend from which it got its name, so we contacted the park. Jackie Rupp, the park interpreter, provided this tale, with the following caveat: “I have no idea how old that story is or how accurate. I have no clue about the source of this story. It could have come from someone who used to work here who made it up and passed it along to other people who worked here. It could have come from a resident who lives on Mount Nebo. It could have been written down, and I just haven’t found it. I haven’t found any newspaper articles about a woman who committed suicide up here. I haven’t found anywhere where this particular story is written down. It may or may not be a good idea to include that story in your book.”

The Lover’s Leap tale she often recounts on walking tours of the park tells the story of a woman who worked at the hotel and fell in love with a wealthy man staying there. “One night, he told her to meet him at Fern Lake, a pond below Lover’s Leap. The woman stole off to Fern Lake to meet him but when she got there, she saw him with another woman. She was so distraught she climbed to Lover’s Leap and jumped off, killing herself. “

Mt. Nebo in Polk County, Arkansas, is technically in the Ouachita Mountains, not the Ozarks, but they share some geomorphic and cultural history. One of the highest peaks in Arkansas and now a state park, Mt. Nebo is a popular recreational area.

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

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. Their most recent book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River is a finalist in Regional Non-fiction in the 2019 Indie Book Awards. Lens & Pen Press’s earlier river book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, was awarded a silver medal by the Independent Publishers’ Book Awards in 2013.

LOVER’S LEAPs still make the news

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Feb 092019
 

Among the true delights of research for our upcoming book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbox to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, was traveling to scenic, even spectacular, locations to take photos.  One of our first photo safaris was to Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee – where we too visited Rock City’s fabled Lover’s Leap. My trusty Google Alerts just brought us this

Mystery couple in Rock City marriage proposal photo sought

Lover’s Leap at Meramec Caverns

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Nov 082018
 

Real photo postcard, circa 1930. Lovers Leap Meramec Caverns © L.L. Coon, Milwaukee, Wis.

In researching Lover’s Leaps we sometimes find images that are identified as a Lover’s Leap, but we have been unable to find their stories. This is the case with excellent real photo postcard inscribed, “Lovers Leap Meramec Caverns.“ Despite much searching (internet and newspaper archives), we’ve only located one reference. An article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch of July 18, 1976, “Fanfare of a Caveman—Lester Dill” is the sole text we found:

“In the course of the conversation, Dill took his visitor for a stroll in the cave and around the grounds down by the river and even took a short boat ride at a concession there. As the boat when up the river, Dill pointed out places of interest. ‘That’s Fife ford, where the James gang used to cross,’ or ‘Daniel Boone hunted in this country when he was an old man,’ or ‘that bluff up there is where Flying Eagle jumped to his death because he couldn’t marry his sweetheart.’ A listener said, ‘you’ve even got a lover’s leap here, too’ and Dill said, ‘sure. Right there.’”

Dill was the owner and developer of Meramec Caverns. This is an unusual variation on the standard story. Most solo dives off bluffs are by unhappy maidens. Most often, it’s the maiden alone or, occasionally, the couple together.

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

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.

James River’s Virgin Bluff and our Lover’s Leap Legends project

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Jul 182018
 

Our new project, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Te of Waco, may not seem on the surface to be a logical offshoot of past projects—but in fact it is. Inspiration from our hero, Mark Twain, and finding in each of our river books their own #Lover’sLeap legends and locations pulled us logically to this new subject.

Real photo postcard by George Hall circa 1915. Virgin Bluff was a landmark on the Galena to Branson float. While tame compared to the shoals of the upper reaches of some Ozark rivers, the rapids just before the big bluff were sporty for the James.

Research on the James Fork of the White brought us to #VirginBluff, a spectacular, sheer rock face on the James, that was a landmark on the Galena-to-Branson float. Johnboats floated through a long, deep, fish-filled pool along its face, then the current pulled the boats into the sporty Virgin Shoals.

This bluff came with its own Lover’s Leap legend – or so we were told. Moon Song, the lovely daughter of an Indian chief, threw herself from this imposing cliff when her father threatened to kill the handsome, gold-seeking Spanish soldier she loved. Angry and heartbroken, her father ordered the medicine man to place a curse on the tragic place. Moon Song’s anguished cries can yet be heard on dark nights, some say. Before the lake the shoals below claimed the lives of several floaters.

The Virgin Bluff dam-that-never-was may have been victim to the medicine man’s curse. William Henry Standish envisioned a dam on the river and a tunnel through the hills from the bluff to shoot the pooled water on a 40-foot drop over several miles to hit turbines to spin generators to create electricity for Springfield. This crazy scheme would have dried up 30+ miles of the river.

A November 23, 1958 Springfield News-Leader feature, “The Indian Curse That Killed Dam Project,” by Gerald H. Pipes, is a rare remembrance of Standish’s plan. Pipes did acknowledge the adverse financial climate of the times (just before World War I), but speculated the abandonment of Virgin Bluff dam might have been due to workplace accidents related to the Indian legend:

Today the lonely “cries” of Moon Song may still be heard along the bluffs, but the dangerous shoals will soon be gone, for they will become a part of mammoth Table Rock Lake. The waters will climb over and hide the Indian maiden’s grave and the scars left by the dam-builders. But will they erase the curse placed on the bluff by Moon-Song’s chieftain father? Only time will tell.

James Fork of the White, page 275

Today, the bluff rises above the flat waters of #TableRock Reservoir. A fall from this bluff is still dangerous; the view from its heights has changed considerably. The legend lingers in the name, Virgin Bluff, and a small winery on the bluff once produced several varieties including Moon Song Blush, Virgin Bluff Red, and Virgin Bluff White.

James Fork of the White and all our books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

Hannibal Missouri’s Own Lover’s Leap – Road Trip No.1

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May 132018
 

With Mark Twain’s humorous comments on Lover’s Leaps up and down the Mississippi as inspiration, the destination for our first road trip on this project was his own jumping off place, Hannibal, Missouri.

March 25, 2017 was not an auspicious day to head out on a photographic safari. We left home in a chilly downpour, heading up I-44 before cutting northward diagonally through eastern Missouri to arrive at Hannibal in early afternoon. We took Market Street past closed or about-to-close businesses to downtown, then drove south on Main Street to Bluff Road below Lover’s Leap. Bluff Road parallels the Mississippi River on the flat floodplain where once was a busy railroad yard.

High above, the precipice jutted out toward the river over the slumped talus slopes.

The Midwest has a palette of grays and browns in the first overcast days of spring. This sometimes bleak appearing landscape has its advantages, however. Later in the spring, when the trees leaf out, many details of a vista are hidden until the seasonal cycle moves through and the leaves fall again. An overcast sky provides even light, no harsh shadows or stark contrast – like a great soft box in the sky.

 

We circled around the bluff and took the steep road up to Lover’s Leap, now a city park.  An additional perk comes with this new subject–generally speaking, these sites are located in very scenic if not spectacular natural settings.

 

Hannibal’s Lover’s Leap is notable for the distinct delineation of the strata of rock that compose it, as well as the sentimental story that gave it its name. The 46th Annual Meeting and Field Trip of the Association of Missouri Geologists was held at Hannibal, Missouri September 24-25, 1999. Lover’s Leap was visited and in their bulletin the group’s preference for hard mineralogical facts over softer romantic fables was apparent:

There are several versions of the legend of Lover’s Leap, but the view of the river and valley and exposed rock are the real attractions of Lover’s Leap. The exposure of strata seen from the base of the bluff shows the Devonian System Louisiana Limestone, and the Mississippian System type-section of the Hannibal Shale, the Dolbee Creek Limestone, a local division of the Burlington Limestone. The famous promontory is Burlington Limestone topped with Wisconsin-age loess.

Still overcast and gray, we didn’t anticipate finding other sightseers, but the vista entices visitors in all seasons.

The Hannibal Courier-Post Days Gone By column reprinted what is said to be the original lovers leap story, starting with a disclaimer: “Nearly every cliffed town, along nearly every river has a Lover’s Leap, and the legend behind the name of the high-topped bluff is nearly always the same. Hannibal is no exception.” Hannibal’s tale tells of a beautiful daughter of an Indian chief who loved a handsome warrior of an opposing tribe. Parental consent was not to be had.

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

New book in the works – LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS: Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco

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Apr 202018
 

We have a new book in the works – Lover’s Leap Legends; Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco. Lover’s Leaps are those dramatic prominences soaring above plains and rivers, impossible not to see, dramatic spots from where you can scan the surrounding landscape. Lover’s Leaps and their attendant legends are scattered across the land.

Inspiration for this more expansive topic comes from our favorite Missouri author and wry observer of humanity – Mark Twain. In Life on the Mississippi he tells of hearing the story of Winona from a fellow passenger on a steamship passing Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, on Lake Pepin (a watery wide spot in the Mississippi River). “…Romantic superstition has invested (Maiden Rock) with a voice; and oft-times as the birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddler fancies he hears the soft sweet music of the long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story. . . . Perhaps the most celebrated, as well as the most pathetic, of all  the legends of the Mississippi.” (Chapter 59, Legends and Scenery”)

Each of our two most recent ‘river books’ (Damming the Osage and James Fork of the White) had a Lover’s Leap – one at Lake of the Ozarks; the other called Virgin Bluff on the James. We had written their legends in our books and through Twain’s account found more.

Linen postcard, 1940s showing Lover’s Leap, overlooking
the junction of the Niangua River and the Osage River.

 

 

Real photo poscard showing Virgin Bluff on the James River, where the lovely Moon Song leapt to her death in sorrow for her father’s threat against the handsome Spaniard she loved.

 

 

So Leland launched the research as we waited for James Fork of the White to be delivered from the printer. The  legends accumulated. The geographic locations were widespread and beautiful. The souvenirs and ephemera commemorating these locations were colorful, kitschy (in an appealilng way), and numerous. The concept took shape. In addition to collecting the myriad popular culture artifacts that commemorate such attractions, which we we’ve often use as illustrations for our books, we’ve hit the trail to seek out some of the more famous ( or infamous) locations to take contemporary photographs. First stop was Mark Twain’s hometown, Hannibal, Missouri, which has its own Lover’s Leap rising above the Mississippi. More on that in the next post.

Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir (amazon.com) and James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River (amazon.com) are  available at this website , amazon.com and Barnes & Noble in Springfield.

Lake of the Ozarks’ LOVER’S LEAP

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Sep 132017
 

In a recent post, we promised more details on Lake of the Ozarks’ own Lover’s Leap and one account of the legend that gave it its name

J.W. Vincent, owner, editor and publisher of the Linn Creek Reveille, published the story of Lover’s Leap more than once in his newspaper. It was a popular tale—one he reprinted in his newspaper twice – “in 1879 and again, by oft repeated request in 1886.” His author’s note to his booklet, Tales of the Ozarks (1913) his tone is almost apologetic:

It was written on a regular assignment in the course of the author’s early newspaper work and bears many marks of the writer’s youth, which fortunately for himself if not for his readers, he has never entirely outgrown. The migration of the Delaware Indians and their subsequent contact with the Osages and other tribes is historical though little known—the local incidents are mainly fictitious.

This particular Lover’s Leap legend strayed somewhat from the standard issue tale of an overbearing patriarch preventing the marriage of a beautiful daughter to the handsome brave she loved. In J. W. Vincent’s tale, the maiden herself rejected a powerful suitor for her own true love. No father is mentioned. The unwelcome suitor is a friend of her brother.

In the picturesque and salubrious valley, where “dwelt a powerful branch of the Osages, one of the great nations of the aboriginal inhabitants of our country,” came a band of weary Lenapes, or Delaware, who had been forced westward from their home on the eastern seaboard. The Osages welcomed them and the two groups lived as congenial neighbors in the valley of Linn Creek.

The Chief of the Osage, Okema, was young and handsome, giant in stature. He and the Lenape chief, Marabo, were close friends—and Marabo had a beautiful sister, Winona. Unfortunately for Okema, Winona’s heart belonged to another, Minetas. The players are named; the stage is set.

The denouement takes place at night on the high bluff above the valley, overlooking the junction of the Osage and Niangua rivers far below. Winona leapt from the cliff to escape Okema. An intense fight ensued between the contending suitors and Okema’s braves. Both braves went over the cliff, as well as another of Okema’s braves. It was a dolorous end to unrequited love, but the dramatic tale has left its mark on the spot.

Netflix’s Marty Byrde undoubtedly did not understand the hallowed and bloody ground on which he stood as he launched his own desperate enterprise in Ozark. He should know, though, the fall today mercifully is forty feet less and ends in water.

NETFLIX’S OZARK vs. the real Lake of the Ozarks

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Sep 022017
 

With great anticipation we began to binge watch Netflix’s 10-part series titled, Ozark. The promos for this turgid story of money laundering and murder set at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks set the scene: “A financial adviser drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks, where he must launder $500 million to appease a drug boss.” (Starring: Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz).

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. The first episode, set primarily in Chicago, made us ambivalent – not fully engaged. Should we finish the episode? Should we even go on to Episode 2? 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.

In Damming the Osage, we used a vivid linen postcard of that scene. Chrome sunset colors aside, some changes to the landscape have occurred since this 1940s image was printed. The distinctive rock has lost one upright piece; a small tree is growing through the cracks; and the tree where the postcard model leaned is gone, the grounds charred by a recent campfire. A modern condo building marks the confluence of the Osage (straight ahead) and the Niangua rivers (coming in from the left). Run your jet ski up the Niangua arm of the Lake and you’ll find the remains of Ha Ha Tonka’s trout lake at the base of the bluff where the ruins of the castle are.

Neither of us had ever been to Lover’s Leap (it is not easy to find and is on private land), but this seemed an opportune time to plan a road trip and seek it out – especially since we were headed to Jefferson City to participate in the total solar eclipse and Lake of the Ozarks is right on the way.

Next post will be extensive passages from J. W. Vincent’s Lover’s Leap Legend in Tales of the Ozarks. Vincent was the owner and editor of the Linn Creek Reveille newspaper from 1880 to 1933. Bagnell Dam was built during his tenure and his opposition to the dam is well documented in his paper. Before that controversy, he published a modest booklet of stories that included one account of how the precipice Marty Byrde stood on got its name.