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.

Newspaper article claims, “Paddlefish survive wild ride over dams.” Do they? Really?

 Damming the Osage, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 262020
 

The Springfield News-Leader ran an intriguing article on paddlefish going over dams and surviving. Sadly, it didn’t mention that most are killed whether they go through the turbines or over the top in a flood. It’s common to see pieces of paddlefish below dams after they were sucked into turbines and chewed up. Our guess is one out of hundreds survive.

But it’s heartening to know that this incredible, giant prehistoric fish occasionally gets lucky. Corps of Engineers’ dams have contributed to their conceivably endangered future. While the adults thrive in reservoir pools, damming blocks access to their spawning grounds.

In our book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, the fate of the paddlefish occupies many pages. Truman Dam destroyed the best spawning grounds in the country. All the paddlefish in Missouri are hatchery-spawned and raised. We quoted a publication by the American Fisheries Society entitled, “The Paddlefish: Status, Management and Propagation” (1986):

Finally, a note of caution. Although techniques for producing and stocking paddlefish were presented in this symposium, we do not consider stocking to be an answer to habitat deterioration and management problems. These techniques were developed for special circumstances where stocking was the only way to maintain a population. Artificial propagation and stocking should not be used as a cure-all or substitute for wise or practical management. Trying to solve problems by treating symptoms is expensive and ineffective. In addition, stocking would affect the integrity of paddlefish gene pools and is ill-advised until we know a lot more about the genetics of this species.

The MICRA paddlefish-sturgeon committee issued a warning in 1998 that “the use of hatcheries to reduce population declines is not a substitute for solving the causes of declines.” In addition to genetic considerations, the paper listed six other problems with stocking,hatche of which “delaying habitat restoration” was the worst.

page 236, Damming the Osage

The Department of Conservation fisheries people are to be praised for keeping the paddlefish from vanishing from Missouri waters. It’s an expensive program and should there be a severe recession raising paddlefish might be defunded. MDC gets most of its money from a conservation sales tax. This largely bypasses political control. Some politicians wish to do away with this arrangement. It’s likely, should the state legislature control the MDC budget, urban interests might not be favorably disposed to maintaining the paddlefish-raising program. Paddlefish might be seen as expendable.

The fate of the paddlefish (or spoonbill) was central to a lawsuit to stop Truman Dam—which obviously failed. Our 304-page book, Damming the Osage, is available on amazon.com or this website at a discount, postage paid

OF DAYS REMEMBERED Quilt – Joe Dice’s Upper Swinging Bridge

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Nov 072019
 

Valorie Fauquier created this pieced and embroidered quilt for the 2015 Benton County Historical Society quilt raffle. Nine local landmarks are commemorated here. 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 won the drawing. They donated it to the Historical Society so everyone could enjoy it. We found it hanging in the Visitor Center, overlooking Truman Dam.

The center block commemorates the “Upper Swinging Bridge,” the last surviving Joe Dice bridge in Benton County. According to the explanatory legend posted nearby, “The Upper Swinging Bridge is the lone survivor of the 31 swinging bridges built in Benton County from 1895-1937. Built in 1904 by the famous local bridge builder Joe Dice, it was rebuilt by Dice after the original bridge was destroyed by a cyclone. It served highway 7 traffic until 1969.” It is now a pedestrian walkway over the Osage River outflow from Truman Dam.

Joseph A. Dice is one of the more interesting characters we discovered in our research for Damming the Osage (see pages 74-76). A self-taught engineer, Dice made his mark and living building swinging bridges across the Osage and its tributaries in what is now the Lake of the Ozarks region. Born in 1866, he built his first “swinger” in 1897 at a ferry crossing of the Osage near where US 65 crosses it today. “The Hackberry Bridge” cost $3,000.

A couple of Dice swingers remain on Aux Glaize Creek near Brumley as well. Driving across them is an adventure as they rattle loudly and sway slightly. From Damming the Osage, page 75:

Some of Dice’s smaller spans cost as little as $1,000. His 1905 Tuscumbia project, perhaps the most difficult, required an 80-foot wooden tower to connect up with a 250-foot cliff across the 600-foot wide Osage. All were constructed from locally obtained materials except the #9 galvanized wire. He worked in the summer and fall when local men were busy with crops, so most of his bridge crews were boys.

Frightened cattle or overloaded trucks broke the decks of some and tornadoes wrecked others, but no Dice bridge ever structurally failed.

Joseph Dice died in 1947 and is buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Warsaw on a high hill overlooking the Osage, with a view of a distant Truman Dam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Postscript to construction of Bagnell Dam

 Damming the Osage  No Responses »
Oct 242019
 

On our more expansive website, Hypercommon.com, we created a section just for Dams. Research on the two big Osage River dams (Bagnell and Harry S. Truman Dam) led us to considering the role of dams – i.e. huge public works projects that speak to the masses/electorate of the power and progress of the political forces who build them. They prove man’s mastery (for a time perhaps) over nature and the forces of relentlessly moving water. They create jobs (short term) and remodel landscape, to the benefit of some and the great detriment of others.

We pondered another, larger project examining dams worldwide and their relationship to the politics of power and money – as evidenced in the materials left behind, the ephemera of propaganda. To explore this idea after the completion of Damming the Osage, we kept collecting, searching out the souvenirs and show pieces of dams worldwide both built and only proposed.

 

 

 

 

One of our initial finds was this photograph showing Louis Egan, former president of union Electric, heading to federal prison after being sentenced under the corrupt practices act. It would have made it into Damming the Osage if we’d had it when still working on the book.

Click on this link to read the full post: “The Fall of Union Electric’s Louis Egan.”

“Dam the Dam: Save Our Land”

 Damming the Osage, Uncategorized  No Responses »
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.

 

 

CHALLENGING KEN WHITE’s article on Paddlefish in the News Leader

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Mar 132018
 

A year ago – almost to the day – Ken White published an article on the opening of the 2017 paddlefish season on the Osage River and its tributaries. A couple of days ago, we found an almost identical article in a couple of regional newspapers, including the Springfield News-Leader. Last year, we wrote to Mr. White, noting the absence of any reference to the artificial breeding program for paddlefish at Blind Pony hatchery run by the Department of Conservation. Made necessary by the destruction of this ancient fish’s primary spawning beds when Truman Dam closed, the fish now trapped in lakes or swimming the upper or lower reaches of the Osage are hatchery spawn, and paddlefish snagging season is an outgrowth of the put-and-take program, fundamentally no different than hatchery trout with the same potential for disastrous genetic outcome.

Repeatedly, Mr. White refers to their “spawning run . ..  when the fish are concentrated in their spawning grounds.” Then he speaks of their “spawning rituals.”  Mr. White, please verify with an ichthyologist or limnologist that they are in fact successfully spawning in Missouri rivers. And he ends the piece with snaggers “ready to hook a fish that has survived for centuries.” As the paddlefish no longer successfully reproduces, they will “survive for centuries” only if the expensive artifical spawning program of the Conservation Department survives future budget cuts and the genetics don’t degenerate with reproducing a limited gene pool.

Right: Paddlefish legally snagged on the James River arm of Table Rock Lake near Cape Fair. 

“Paddlefish have been lost from four states and Canada, and eleven of twenty two states within the remaining species range now list the paddlefish as endangered, threatened, or a species of special concern. Restoration of paddlefish populations is a shared goal of many state and federal agencies.” (USGS)

Below: Map from USGS paddlefish study showing the diminishing range of the paddlefish

 

If journalists like Mr. White continue to ignore the scientific realities of conservation of species, how will the public be able to make informed choices when such issues are presented in the public forum? Truman Dam is the source of the paddlefish’s dilemma. Had the public realized the consequences of this monstrously unwise project, the lawsuit might have had a different outcome. At the time, the Conservation Department repressed the findings of their fisheries biologists because one of the commissioners was an avid supporter of the project. Ignorance continues, abetted by Mr. White.

Last year, we even offered to send him a copy of our book, Damming the Osage. Mr. White did not reply. So this year, we won’t email him our suggestions. We’ll just share our thoughts with you.

March 11, 2017:
Your article was informative about the paddlefish and included some local color and good pictures. However, there was no mention of the sad fact that snagging is a put and take fishery. The “spawning run” is a swim up the river to futility. Paddlefish snagged in the Osage above Bagnell Dam and James River arm of Table Rock are artificially reproduced and raised at the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Blind Pony Hatchery. This is a hugely expensive operation and will, in the long run, produce a genetically unfit creature that resembles the malformed rainbow trout that are the product of generations of aquaculture. Department biologists are well aware of this and it can be overcome somewhat by mixing in genetic material from paddlefish from other regions but that’s a lot of trouble and adds even more expense.
Truman Dam destroyed the only reliable paddlefish spawning environment. Occasionally eggs are produced on the upper Osage and James but there’s no indication they survive and mature.  It’s a very bad situation and if the public doesn’t understand it, the extraordinary measures that may be necessary in the future for the survival of the species may not be undertaken, as funds are research will surely be necessary.
We cover this in a book we published several years ago, Damming the Osage. If you’d like a copy, please email me your mailing address. We have quite a discussion of these issues on our website: www.dammingtheosage.com
It’s a nice piece, but incomplete. Sooner or later there will be more challenges for the paddlefish and only a community of well-informed sportsmen stand between survival and extinction. Truth is they are hanging from a slender thread even with the heroic actions of the Department of Conservation.

Our sons, Strader and Ross, supplied some video of paddlefish in China which we incorporated into a short video on the current dilemma of the paddlefish worldwide. See it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rmT090b9NT0

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

Book Review: OSCEOLA: A TOWN ON THE BORDER

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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