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

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
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.

Bass Fishing “The Rock”

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 012018
 

Even early dam opponents conceded fishing was good in newly filled reservoirs. Decaying vegetation and flooded timber provided fertility and cover for the fish.

One species drives sport fishing on Table Rock Lake, and hundreds of other government reservoirs – the largemouth black bass. They are superbly adapted to artificial lakes and they hit artificial lures with wild abandon.

As expected, Table Rock was excellent fishing soon after the dam was completed. This 1962 photograph of Virgil Ward and guide Dick Hovick with a two-day catch of Table Rock big mouth was in an ad for Ward’s “Bass-Buster” lures. This syndicated fishing show was often filmed there. Fifty years later, bass growth has slowed, but “The Rock,” as Table Rock Lake is called, hosts hundreds of bass tournaments. Since the lake filled, Missouri Department of Conservation biologists have kept track of fish populations. The Department’s “Annual Prospects Report” stated, “Fishing for black bass should be good in 2016.”

James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River (page 320)

James Fork of the White is available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

Joseph Philibert Cemetery, final resting place for Granny Gore, “Cherokee Doctor”

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jan 212018
 

If you turn west from Highway 13 on Joe Bald Road, you’ll pass the entrance to Joseph Philibert Cemetery. Named for the first white settler in Stone County, this hilltop cemetery is where the graves of twenty small graveyards in the Table Rock Lake basin were relocated.

Among the markers are those for William Carol “Tipton” Gore and his second wife, Nancy “Granny” Gore, “Cherokee Doctor.” Nancy Gore was born in Tennessee about 1820, married William Gore and they moved to Arkansas, then to Stone County about 1848. They settled near the confluence of the James and White rivers. Their neighbors were the Joseph Philibert (1812-1884) and William Gillis families who had a trading post where they bought furs from the Indians. The Philibert family graveyard was near the site of the trading post. Twenty-two graves were in the old cemetery when Table Rock Lake began to fill. Among those were the Gores.

Headstones were modest, and many burials were only marked with rocks to indicate a grave. A new marker was made for Granny Gore, a Cherokee medicine woman and wife of pioneer William Tipton Gore. Small family cemeteries in the basin of Table Rock Reservoir were moved to higher ground before the lake filled. Headstones and remains of twenty graveyards, such as they were, were dug up and relocated in the new Joseph Philibert Cemetery just north of Kimberling City.
                                                                  James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River

Granny Gore’s Ozark Folk Medicine by Sherman Lee Pompey:

And finally in the words of Granny herself, “You see, the good Lord made herbs an’ roots for the purpose of medicines. A lot of medicines that we used in the early hills was nothing more than the same thing or the artificial substitute of these things used today by modern medical science.”