CAUGHT AT OSCEOLA MO – Spoonbill / Paddlefish

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
Mar 042023
 

Paddlefish grow big and photogenic. This late real photo postcard was not mailed, so there’s no postmark—possibly 1950s?

On the back of the low-contrast, rather unfocused postcard is a discussion of the edibility of the “spoonbill catfish,” written in blue ballpoint: “Most people eat them and say they are as good as any other fish—but some say they aren’t fit to eat and give them away. We never eat any so don’t know.” The writer explained, “the bill is about the size of a boat paddle.”

In fact, the more common name for these large plankton filter feeders is paddlefish. Their flesh is quite good, and their eggs are a decent substitute for caviar from sturgeon. In Missouri it’s illegal to transport or sell paddlefish eggs, however. Regulations vary from state to state. There is a legal commercial fishery for paddlefish on the Mississippi River.

Once a low hydroelectric dam at Osceola concentrated the spawning run of paddlefish. Before Truman Dam, the best spawning riffles for the paddlefish were between Osceola and Lake of the Ozarks. Truman Dam now thwarts the spawning run and has covered their opportunity for natural reproduction in Missouri. The Conservation Department maintains the population by raising them in hatcheries. Today artificially raised paddlefish are released into the reservoirs for the benefit of snaggers. Snagging with big treble hooks is the only way they can be taken. You can’t bait a hook with tiny zooplankton.

As beluga sturgeon are now a threatened species, an illegal trade in paddlefish eggs has developed. Poachers with Russian names have been arrested for smuggling paddlefish eggs and the caviar made from them. Their caviar sells for about $250 a pound. Mature females often carry 20 pounds of eggs (roe).

 

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. Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, a 304-page color-illustrated book, tells the dramatic saga of human ambition pitted against natural limitations and forces beyond man’s control.

Gentrification of an Outlaw Hangout on the Osage River

 Damming the Osage, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 102021
 

Club House, Monegaw Springs, real photo postcard by Becraft

Between bank, stage, and train robberies, the Younger Brothers’ gang found refuge and recreation in the rugged hills of the Osage. Grandfather Younger had settled here in the 1840s. Relatives and even former slaves of the family took pride in sheltering the outlaws. Frank and Jesse James on occasion joined the Youngers at the billiard table in the spacious hall of the log hotel at Monegaw Springs. The young men attended dances where they thrilled local girls with stories of their exploits on behalf of the vanquished.

In 1905 the old house and 300 acres were acquired by a group of Kansas City businessmen who created “The Monegaw Club.” The KC headquarters of the club were in the office of Mr. James B. Keister, 706 Bank of Commerce Building. The Henry County Democrat, August. 3, 1905 took several paragraphs from the Kansas City Journal description:

“The old log tavern on the crest of Mount Monegaw, now the property of the club, is one of the historic buildings of St. Clair county. The hotel was built in1854 by Thomas Estes and Harry Davis, both well known in the county at that time and still remembered. The building was originally intended for a hotel and since its erection has been conducted as such, with the exception of a short period during the war.

A fifteen foot veranda has been built around the old log hotel, which is being remodeled, retaining as much as possible its original rustic features—An up-to-date café and grill room will be one of the attractions at the club; other modern conveniences will be introduced. A pumping system, which required some skilled engineering, has been installed, and for the first time in the history of this ancient resort, the sulpher water is being pumped to the top of Monegaw hill. A bathhouse with sulpher plunge, sulpher baths, vapor baths and mud baths will be maintained.”

At the time it was built, the log hotel was said to be the largest log structure west of the Mississippi. Kansans burned the town during the Civil War, but spared the hotel. The old log hotel burned in 1926.

 

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.

Early Party Barge on the Osage to Monegaw Springs

 Damming the Osage, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
May 132021
 

Real photo postcard by Thomas: “Excursion—Osceola to Monegaw. June 20 – 09”

Nearly a century before Lake of the Ozarks’ infamous Party Cove, people found entertainment on the free-flowing Osage. Small steamboats, some pushing barges, delivered large parties from Osceola to Monegaw Springs, eight miles upstream, after commercial river traffic had almost disappeared.

The effort to finance a railroad from Osceola to Monegaw Springs failed. Attempts to capitalize on Monegaw’s celebrated springs have been persistent, but largely unrewarded. Its geographic isolation has been problematic, and later public recognition that drinking spring water had no medicinal benefit sealed its fate.

Even if Monegaw ultimately fizzled as a spa and resort, it was clearly a fun place to visit in the early 1900s. Recreationalists back then dressed more formally but from what we understand alcoholic beverages were equally popular (some things don’t change).

 

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.

 

Giant Osage River Catfish

 Damming the Osage, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 232021
 

Photo by Becraft, Osceola, MO. 68 Pounds #25

On the first page of the first chapter in Damming the Osage, we wrote:

After being the subject of the real photo postcard, this sixty-eight-pound blue catfish likely became the blue plate special at an Osceola, Missouri café. Though not uncommon in the Osage River, big fish were newsworthy. Several hundred miles downstream and a decade earlier another huge catfish (a blue or a flathead) made the June 1, 1895, Jefferson City Daily Tribune:

“News has just been received here of the strange manner in which John Harnett an Osage River fisherman, lost his life by being drowned by a catfish weighing 105 pounds. No one witnessed the death struggle which occurred some twenty-five miles up the river, but the finding of Harnett’s body, a trot-line and the live fish attached thereto some hours after he was missed tells the story of how he lost his life. He had wrapped one end of the line around his hand and been jerked in the river and drowned by the struggles of the fish to free itself.”

This was a true Osage river monster cat, so big the men holding the staff supporting it had to stand on boxes to keep the tail off the ground. Times and the river’s ecology have changed.  The most recent headline-grabbing hefty fish pulled from the Osage was a 112-pound invasive black carp.

 

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.

SURREAL 1907 OSAGE RIVER POSTCARD

 Damming the Osage, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Feb 182021
 

Real photo postcard marked, “Osage River” and “Becraft Photog. (21).”

What in the world is that ball on a stick  doing in the middle of the Osage River, poking up from the bottom of this real photo postcard?

This enigmatic view is postmarked “Monegaw Springs Aug. 23, 1907.” It was addressed to Miss Mary Mifflin Kansas City, Mo: “Dear Sister, this is a splendid picture of the Osage. Having a royal good time. Am rather used to the strange country ways by now … lovingly, Edna.” “Strange country” indeed—what IS that ball on a stick?

Did surrealism, the art of incongruous imagery, hit the Ozarks a decade before the term was even coined in Paris? If you’ve got any idea what that ball and stick are please let us know at lensandpen@yahoo.com

We have half a dozen Becraft real photo postcards, mostly of Osceola and the upriver spa, Monegaw Springs. In our book Damming the Osage, we used a wonderful image of his showing a 68 lb. blue cat proudly displayed by two men and a boy on the streets of that old river town.

NOTE: In 1905 a group of Kansas City businessmen acquired the old Monegaw log hotel (once a favorite haunt of the James and Younger brothers while laying low from the law) and began development of a resort on the Osage. It’s entirely possible Miss Edna was a guest at the Monegaw Club.  Watch for a future post on the post-outlaw life of the old hotel in Monegaw.

Several Lens & Pen Press books discuss the evolution of the Ozark landscape and our effects on its rivers. Check out Damming the Osage which has an extended explanation of Monegaw Springs and its outlaw history. All our books are now on sale for half price, postage paid. Order on www.dammingtheosage.com

MEMORIES OF THE UNDAMMED OSAGE RIVER

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
Jan 012021
 

Not included in the cost/benefit analysis of Corps of Engineers water resource projects are the economic, social and emotional costs of those who are dispossessed of their land.

China’s monster dam projects displaced millions of farmers and covered hundreds (or more) villages. They caused the extinction of China’s 20-foot-long paddlefish species, a close relative of our own Polyodon spathula. Truman Dam and Reservoir didn’t cause the extinction of the smaller American paddlefish, but it did necessitate development of an artificial breeding program by the Missouri Department of Conservation. That dam destroyed the spawning beds of the spoonbill, as they are called by locals.

There was an uncounted human cost as well. Hundreds of families lost their land to Truman reservoir. Not only was their compensation based on land sale records, in many cases old (some farms had not changed hands in generations) providing misleading valuations, but comparable acreage was not available to replace their livelihood of farming. So they were essentially put out of business. Some of those operations had been in business for a century or more and had supported successive generations of a family. During that time many memories were formed and family traditions established, which were now severed.

Melanie Pruitt with her grandparents on the Sac River in 1980.
Praise to George Eastman whose 1-A Kodak first made the family snapshot feasible. Photos like this have preserved a record of pleasant, fleeting moments that might be forgotten without a picture.
Thanks to Melanie Pruitt for permission to reproduce this lovely image.

We received an email recently that poignantly describes this emotional cost of losing land to ill-justified “multipurpose” dam and reservoir schemes. With permission, here is the email from Melanie Pruitt with a wonderful snapshot of young Melanie with her grandparents on the Sac River arm of the headwaters of Truman Reservoir:

I read Damming the Osage from cover to cover in 72 hours after receiving. … It was beyond amazing. I have spent YEARS trying to explain to people the impact of this situation. And everyone always says, but it’s for flood control. My family was very much impacted by this and lost land to the Corps, but not nearly as much as many, many others impacted. I haven’t stopped talking about your book, as I now can fully explain to people something I always believed in but never knew the whole story or how to explain.

Attaching a pic of me with my grandparents from summer of 1980 on the Sac river, taken just west of new bridge on 82 highway in Osceola. The lake hadn’t completely filled yet (close though) but the color of the water was still blue, not brown. That’s what’s chilling. It’s the last pic I have of me and my grandparents together, as my grandpa passed away in January 1981. I could go on for eternity on what this river means to me, my family, etc. and the impacts of everything.

The Sac is now also dammed farther upstream at Stockton.

 

 

 

The story of Osceola and many of the colorful characters who lived there (including the James and Younger brothers) is woven through our 304-page book. It is now available for $17.50, half the original price, from our website 

Book Review: OSCEOLA: A TOWN ON THE BORDER

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 212017
 

A visitor driving into the St. Clair County seat, Osceola, today sees a small town with some 19th-century store facades, a classic Art Moderne movie theater (now empty), a mural proclaiming its rich and sometimes violent past and a million-dollar jail. Courthouse towns are more resistant to oblivion than many small towns. And Osceola is just a mile off US Highway 13, a major north-south artery. Beyond the square, a fatter Osage River stalls as it becomes the backwaters of Truman Reservoir. The riverfront is quiet – no boats or fishing docks or swimming beaches. Only the mural, “A town where history lives,” hints at the town’s rather amazing story.

In his new book, Osceola: A Town On The Border, Lawrence Lewis defies the borders or boundaries of the local history genre, opting instead for setting his small hometown in the context of history, philosophy, and environmental wrangling. Lewis identifies three key events that have shaped the town and brought it to its current state: the burning of the city by Jim Lane and his Kansas bushwhackers during the Civil War; 1870 bonds on the taxpayers to build a railroad that never materialized; and, last, the building of Truman Dam and the tremendous impact that had on the small city’s politics, population, and tax base.

The event that still rankles and has shaped its self-image was the 1861 burning of the town by Kansas Jayhawkers. Before the Civil War conflagration, Osceola had been a bustling trade center. In his research, Larry Lewis found an enthusiastic description penned by the newspaper editor in 1860: “Osceola can boast of better hotels, more accommodating landlords, deserving landladies, prettier women, handsomer men, faster horses, warmer weather, meaner water, more business, better whiskey, lager beer and ale, and (fewer) churches, preachers and church-going people and Sabbath Schools than any other town in the state, St. Louis not excepted.” With such a lively burg and its likely prospects for prosperity, it’s no wonder the event is still central to the town’s identity.

Osceola native and St. Louis teacher, Lawrence (Larry) Lewis is shown in this photo from the late 1960s wearing a poncho for protection against morning rains and mist from the water flowing over Osceola Dam. Ancestors of Larry’s settled near the Osage River and its tributaries Tebo Creek and Hogles Creek in St. Clair, Henry and Benton counties, Missouri, in the 1830s.

 

As well as intriguing stories and characters, Osceola: A Town On The Border, relates some little-known geologic history. Only recently was it determined that Osceola sits in a bowl created by an asteroid strike 350 million years ago. “Kaboom…” announces Chapter 2, which is devoted to this geologic peculiarity. One of the 50 largest impact craters on earth, it may be the largest exposed impact crater in the U.S. The impact somehow created perfectly round rocks that are scattered all over. Sometimes called “Osceola round rocks” or “Weaubleau eggs,” they look like geodes but are not. They’re often embedded in foundations or stone fences in Osceola. The composition of impact breccia is not often discussed in local histories. Throughout the book, the author weaves tidbits of scientific information into the story of the town.

The seat of St. Clair County, Osceola once bustled, its riverfront busy with occasional steamboats. Frequently visitors needed transport upriver to Monegaw Springs, a spa of health-giving waters and bluff-top views of the river. Lewis has searched existing written accounts of Osceola and includes good amount of his own family history.

No book on this part of the country would be complete without mentioning the gun battle at Roscoe between two of the Younger brothers and Pinkerton detectives sent by the railroad from Chicago to capture the train-robbing associates of Jesse James. Roscoe is on the road between Osceola and Monegaw, where the Youngers liked to hang out. John Younger and two of the Pinkertons were killed in the shootout. Dr. Lawrence Lewis was one of the post-mortem attending physicians.

Truman Dam at Warsaw blocked paddlefish from the upper Osage and drowned their spawning grounds. Today, the Missouri Department of Conservation artificially raises paddlefish. These hatchery-raised fish are stocked in the lake and make spawning runs up the Osage but reproduction is very rare. Osceola is also not far from significant waterfowl hunting at Schell-Osage.

Although the Osage River (now backed up by Truman Dam and Reservoir) still forms one border of the town, Osceola is “Not the River Town it used to be,” as Chapter 5 is titled. The riverbank is now owned by the Corps of Engineers and is off limits to commercial marinas. “Some losses are forever,” Lewis sums up the story of Truman Dam and Reservoir and his hometown.

One might not recognize Osceola as a seat of Platonic philosophy, but as a result of the work and life of Thomas Moore Johnson, “the Sage of the Osage,” Osceola was at one time the center of Platonism in the Midwest. Johnson was an acquaintance of the New England transcendentalists and collector of learned tomes, leaving a renowned library (known locally as the “book house”) of esoteric and wide-ranging works of philosophy and religions of the world in many languages.

Lewis’s research ranges widely from court records of the environmental lawsuit and scientific analysis of the meteor strike to historic correspondence of citizens and more recent personal reminiscences, his own and those of other longtime residents. The town this book reveals is surprising. Readers will go on a voyage of discovery in Osceola: A Town on the Border.

This review is also published in the April issue of River Hills Traveler (http://www.riverhillstraveler.com/ ) In addition to the review, we provided RHT a number of vintage photos of Osceola on the Osage.

OSCEOLA: A Town on the Border, by Lawrence B. Lewis, is available on amazon.com             CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.Paperback, 174 pages. $18.99

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