Steamboat J.R. Wells Unloading at Tuscumbia, Circa 1900

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Jul 222021
 

 

This stern-wheeler worked the river below Warsaw delivering farm produce and timber to a rail connection at Osage City, or St. Louis, returning with merchandise. Log books in the collection of the Miller County Museum and Historical Society enumerated its 1904 cargo:

“Here are items the Wells carried that year: 5,337 sacks of wheat, 2 tons hay, 305 head of cattle, 1,439 railroad ties, 445 head sheep, 2,587 hogs, 280 gallons wine and whiskey, 956 cases eggs, 134 coops of poultry, 14,122 pounds produce, 215,122 pounds farm machinery, 8,208 pounds bacon, 961 barrels salt, 16,484 pounds iron, 33 barrels oil, 33 tons coal, 128,403 pounds wire, 41,760 feet oak lumber, 20,000 pounds mill machinery, 123,177 feet pine lumber, 1,852 bunches shingles, 34,4060 pounds sewer pipe, 6 barrels lime, 124 barrels cement, 150 brick, 150,000 pounds clay or chalk, 756 sacks corn in ear, 620 bushels shelled corn and 140 passengers.”

The Miller County Historical Association has an interesting history of early navigation on the rivers on http://www.millercountymuseum.org/rivernav.html

 

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.

 

Steamboat J. R. Wells on the Osage

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Jun 112021
 

Steamboat J. R. Wells at Linn Creek, late 1800s

A few steamboats still operated on the lower Osage River in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Sometimes they carried excursion parties instead of cargo. Before the Civil War, “daring, reckless and adventurous men” ran far upstream in high water to sup­ply frontier settlements with necessities, returning to St. Louis with barrels of mast-fed hog hams, deer skins, and furs.

Built at Tuscumbia by Anchor Milling Company in 1897, the J.R. Wells steamboat was 110 feet long, with a 20-foot beam. With its barge, the Ida, also built by Anchor Milling, the Wells worked up and down the Osage for a couple of decades.

In 1919, the Wells was sold to a Missouri River operator. In 1920, it was crushed by ice floes and sank at Pelican Bend near St. Charles, Missouri.

 

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.

A BLEAK OZARK CREEK IN MILLER COUNTY

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Jan 272021
 

In the past, even when degraded by early agriculture, clear Ozark creeks were apparently valued enough to be photographed. Present-day agriculturalists also appreciate their charm and take much better care of them.

This real photo postcard from the early 1900s shows a small, unnamed Ozark stream. It is a puzzlement. Why would Scott’s (?) Photographic Studio in Tuscumbia waste film on a picture lacking a conventional subject or purpose? Even the name of the studio embossed on the card is unclear. But someone valued it. The back has glue residue indicating it was once saved in an album.

The sad, battered $2.50 postcard also documents that subsistence farming was hard on waterways. Though fragments of fencing are visible, it’s likely livestock in search of water caused some of these crumbling stream banks. There are little vegetation and few trees to prevent erosion either. Extensive chert beds still clog Ozark rivers but today’s permanent pastures do not add much gravel as the old-time row cropping practices did.

Today, this place, likely in Miller County Missouri, would look less raw, dreary, and desolate even in winter. Farmers now will rarely allow cattle access to streams. They are watered in troughs or ponds. Streambank trees and vegetation inhibit erosion. Economics has caused the conversion of plowed fields into pastures and there is an accompanying sensitivity of agriculturalists to ecological benefits. The Missouri Department of Conservation has pointed this out and acquainted landowners with USDA cost-sharing programs that pay for creating stream buffers.

 

Several Lens & Pen Press books discuss the evolution of the Ozark landscape and our effects on its rivers. Check out Damming the Osage and James Fork of the White on www.beautifulozarks.com All our books are now on sale for half price, postage paid. Order on www.dammingtheosage.com