OF DAYS REMEMBERED Quilt includes Warsaw Missouri’s Lover’s Leap

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Oct 172019
 

Valorie Fauquier created this pieced and embroidered quilt for the 2015 Benton County Historical Society quilt raffle. Nine local landmarks are commemorated here. One block shows the Lover’s Leap on the Osage. Nowadays the leap ends with a splash in the upper reaches of Lake of the Ozarks.

According to the explanatory legend posted near the quilt, “Lover’s Leap remains an unusual rock formation along the Osage River. It can be seen across the river while standing near the south end of Drake Harbor,” which is on the lakeshore below downtown Warsaw.

 

 

 

 

Valorie spent several hundred hours detailing nine of the historical landmarks of Benton County. Members of the Historical Society sold raffle tickets through the summer and the drawing was held October 31. Mr. and Mrs. Troy Kessner of Independence Missouri had the winning ticket. They donated it to the Historical Society so everyone could enjoy it. We found it hanging in the Visitor Center, overlooking Truman Dam.

 

 

 

From our forthcoming book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco:

Just below Warsaw is another Lover’s Leap also with a vague legend. This leap was modest even before Lake of the Ozarks flooded its base. The 1950s postcard (above left) shows the plunge would even be even less than when the Osage River ran underneath. Though lacking a retrievable story, this Lover’s Leap is pictured on postcards from 1909 to the 1950s and is even a block on a quilt illustrating famous local landmarks.

See a flipbook of sample pages at our website: Hypercommon.com

Damming the Osage and all our books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.  Lover’s Leap Legends will be published Spring 2020.

Construction of Bagnell Dam Began Transformation of lower Osage River

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Oct 102019
 

Raines Family at their Rock House. Photo courtesy of Tim Helton.

Construction of Bagnell Dam brought great changes to the Osage River valley: road building, moving towns, graveyards, and people from its banks.

According to Tim Helton, son-in-law of Sally Raines, her father, William Maurice Raines, was “an attorney with a St. Louis firm retained by Union Electric to help secure land rights so they could create Lake of the Ozarks.”

Sally Raines on the porch of the family home. Photo courtesy of Tim Helton.

In Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, we made the case that Bagnell Dam, which created Lake of the Ozarks, was a complicated scheme by complicated schemers to financially benefit themselves, not the public. It was conceived of in the Roaring Twenties and finished in the early years of the Great Depression. It did finally become a major tourist nexus after World War Two, but it was little used or developed in the 1930s and early ‘40s. There is no denying that its land acquisition and construction phase brought financial benefits to the region.

The family’s old rock house, a classic Ozark adaptation of an Arts & Crafts/Craftsman bungalow-style dwelling faced in rock rubble, is still intact on the Niangua Arm of the Lake.

Tim Helton reports, “It’s amazingly in about the same ‘configuration’ that it was all those years ago.”

Raines family home in the 1920s. The building still exists on the Niangua arm of Lake of the Ozarks. Photo courtesy of Tim Helton.

Personal benefit of the construction of Lake of the Ozarks – Leland’s father, Louis Strader Payton, was employed as a highway engineer to create roads around the new project. The Kentucky engineer met and courted a local schoolteacher, Annie Lewis Daniels. They married in 1939.

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

BIG FISH IN WARSAW – and we’re not talking paddlefish (for once)!

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
Oct 032019
 

 

Research for Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir had us crisscrossing the lake, river and roads that make up the Osage River watershed. One focus of the book was the loss of the spawning grounds of the paddlefish – today’s specimens are direct descendants of a prehistoric, cartilaginous fish and still roaming the waters of the Osage and Missouri river systems. But they’re not the only fish in the rivers and lakes.

One afternoon in our wanderings we came across a giant folk art concrete crappie (above) hanging from a pole in front of a taxidermy shop south of Warsaw. Naturally this concrete creature of immense proportions caught our eye. We included it on a spread with a big paddlefish (page 145, Damming the Osage). That was about 10 years ago.

In late May of this year, we were astonished to see that same monstrous crappie (there can only be one of these!) guy-wired to the back wall of Cody’s Bait & Tackle shop  across the river from downtown Warsaw.

Naturally we pulled in to ask how it crossed the river. We talked with proprietor Cody. He said it was made by the owner of the taxidermy shop where we had originally seen it. Cody purchased it from his widow. We suggested he donate it to the Benton County Historical Society—an idea he rejected. He loves that fish. And who wouldn’t?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

“Dam the Dam: Save Our Land”

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Sep 262019
 

On a recent trip to see flood-bloated, monstrous Truman Reservoir, bulging at its gates from this year’s rains, we stopped at Truman Visitor Center. There we found an art exhibit, which included a painting by E. Mike Parker, of a billboard Leland had photographed decades ago. The billboard is long gone, but some memories don’t fade.

The museum is professionally done and recent cadre of Corps staff are pretty enlightened about water resource projects and objective about their controversial aspects, even acknowledging that in today’s world Truman Reservoir would likely not be built.

 

 

Leland was one of the instigators (plaintiffs) of the failed lawsuit to stop construction of Harry S. Truman Dam on the upper Osage River. The sad story of the lawsuit is told in considerable detail—and we must confess with a partisan slant—in Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir. 

At the time (early 1970s) Leland had a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop an exhibit entitled Missouri: A Portrait in Light and Sound. For this project, he photographed all regions of the state, including the Osage River basin. Driving the roads of Benton and Henry counties, he saw farms  destined to go under the water, cemeteries that must be moved, and profound changes coming to a stable agricultural life. Not everyone was on board with the Chamber of Commerce.

 

(above and left) Hand-painted roadside billboards near Clinton, 1972.  There were loud assertions that everybody in the Osage valley wanted Truman Dam completed, but anti-dam sentiments were not uncommon, just repressed and underre­ported.. page 221, Damming the Osage

 

From the beginning, the triumphant business community had ignored the feelings of farmers like W. R. Bataschelett whose poignant letter was published in the Clinton Daily Democrat on March 27, 1972:

I would like to know the reaction of Clinton businessmen, including the Democrat, if a government agency would come to them and say, we need your place of business for recreational purposes and we will give you so many dollars and expect you to vacate or we will condemn your property and will have to leave immediately. This is what farmers are told who will lose their homes and farms to Truman Dam. Their farming is a business just the same as Clinton businessmen.

About the cost of said dam that has already been paid out, would not the taxpayers be better by losing completely that 20% spent to date or spending 80% more trying to save the (above and left) already spent 20%? What is more important, a place to water ski, fish and boat or a farmer’s home and land?

 

 

For more interesting life-after-the-dam posts, check out our new website: hypercommon.com

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

 

 

Ha Ha Tonka: One family’s memories

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Sep 082019
 

This wonderful family photograph, which was sent to us by Tim Helton, shows young Sally Raines with her mother, Gladys Mary (maiden name Wells) Raines near Ha Ha Tonka before it burned. Per Tim Helton, Gladys (Wells) Raines’ father, William Maurice Raines (University of Missouri, Class of 1917), was “an attorney with a St. Louis firm retained by Union Electric to help secure land rights so they could create Lake of the Ozarks.”

“Sally does not remember where this picture was taken – only that they were nice people and put her up on that horse – because she didn’t have anyone to play with!”

Seen in the above Helton/Raines family snapshot from the 1930s, Ha Ha Tonka was built as the second home of the Snyder family of Kansas City. Robert McClure Snyder purchased 2,500 acres in 1904 on which to build his vision of a European stone castle in the Ozarks. He did not live to see it completed, dying in an automobile accident in 1906.

The Snyder Family sued Union Electric when Bagnell Dam created Lake of the Ozarks, which backed up into the spring branch full of introduced trout. The suit bounced in and out of courts for more than a decade. We covered the lawsuit extensively in Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir.

Ha Ha Tonka, now Missouri’s most popular state park, features a great spring, several large caves, and the stabilized ruins of the Snyder’s stone castle. The history of Ha Ha Tonka is indeed one of the more conflicted tales of the Osage basin.

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

How Did Missouri Choose its Capitol? From Humble Beginnings

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Apr 212019
 

As Cole County, home of our state capitol, and the state of Missouri approach their 200th year, the Jefferson City News Tribune (April 21) has posted an interesting article about the origins of our state capitol and Cole County.

Steel engraving of Missouri’s second capitol from an 1852 Meyers’ Universum, published in Germany. (and page 292, Damming the Osage)

As part of the congressional legislation to establish Missouri as a state, a commission was created to find a suitable site for the State Capital. Jesse Boone of Montgomery County, John White of Pike County, Robert Watson of New Madrid, and John Thornton of Howard County were appointed commissioners to locate this site. With the Missouri River running across the center of the state, this was the most logical choice, and the commission was directed to choose a site within 40 miles of the mouth of the Osage River. Since rivers were the maritime highways to get across Missouri, this made the most sense.

In Damming the Osage, we delved briefly into the role that river played in the establishment of the newly carved out state of Missouri and the creation of its capitol. See our earlier blog post on the subject as well.

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.

 

 

Callaway County’s First Post Office established 1818

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Mar 312018
 

Two centuries ago this month, (yes – 200 years!) the first post office Callaway County (aka The Kingdom of Callaway) opened in Cote Sans Dessein on the north side of the Missouri River, just downstream from its confluence with the Osage.

Left: Osage River joins the Missouri River near Bonnots Mill, on the south  side of the Osage, in Osage County. Bonnots Mill “is a continuation of Dauphin that was founded by French traders a few years after Zebulon Pike passed by (1805).” (p. 290, Damming the Osage.)

To mark the occasion, the post office in Tebbetts, Missouri, which now serves the area once served by the Cote San Dessein post office, will offer a “special anniversary postmark.” This special cancellation will be available at the Tebbetts Post Office through April 26.

Read all about it in the Jefferson City Tribune.

Additional information on the history of the area is available at the Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society.

 

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

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