Irish Wilderness travels remembered

 Irish Wilderness, Lens & Pen Press, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 112025
 

Tim Reeves’ grave is in a small, chain-link fenced plot north of Doniphan. Weathering (in 2011) had almost obliterated the lettering, which reads: “Col. Tim Reeves, born Apr 28,1821 Died Mar 10 1885  Separation is our lot. Meeting is our hope.”

This image popped up  from my ‘google pics memory’ bank this morning. Fourteen years ago, on an equally beautiful spring morning as today, we searched out the grave of Timothy Reeves – itinerant preacher whose suspicions of Father Hogan and the Catholic Church were voiced to the early settlers of Oregon and Ripley counties – well before the Civil War. Reeves became a Colonel for the 15th Missouri Cavalry Regiment, “a local southern-sympathizing militia” during the Civil War.  Our chapter “Wars Devastations” in Mystery of the Irish Wilderness carries many more details of the brutal guerrilla warfare in the Ozarks.

This image however calls to mind wonderful days seeking out isolated or abandoned places associated with Father John Joseph Hogan’s Irish settlement, begun with such hope and purpose, scattered and torn by “war’s devastation.”  Still the story echoes in local history to this day and is solidified in a national account by the area’s designation as “The Irish Wilderness.”

Springfield’s Own “Strange Tribe of Nimrods” – the Molly Joggers

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
Apr 082025
 

“What is a Molly Jogger?” you ask. We, too, were puzzled. Read on  to learn more about this “strange tribe of nimrods.”

 

Early 1900s photograph of the Molly Joggers, an unknown boy, and their cook Shorty. The club was organized in the late 1800s by Pennsylvania-born Cyrus H. Patterson. It became extinct in 1930 when Patterson died. Through these decades there had been a total of ten members.

The Springfield hunting and fishing club once had their headquarters near Jamesville. It was a singular, even bizarre group, kind of an Animal-House-on-the-James. One of its members, John Dunckel, a lumberman-turned-drummer, published a book, The Molly Joggers: Tales of the Camp-fire, in 1906 ostensibly based on the organization’s outings. Most of its eighty-eight pages consist of ethnic jokes told in dialect – which is what one might expect from the pen of a traveling salesman at the turn of the last century. Irish, Swedish, Dutch, and of course African-American stereotypes fill the book, but no hillbillies. That word was just beginning to appear in print around 1906 and had not yet replaced the hick, rube, or mountaineer as the naïve rustic of choice.

Twice a year they pitched large tents along the James and an accomplished black cook named Shorty furnished repasts like “fried biscuits in butter, country-cured hickory-smoked ham, fried eggs, fried potatoes and onions with wild honey and sorghum on your biscuits for dessert, washed down by a cup of good coffee.”

This amused-at-their-own-antics group did range beyond their encampment at the junction of the James and Finley. A November 6, 1899, piece in the Leader-Democrat gleefully related their outdoor adventures:

The festive “Molly Joggers” of Springfield are again out on their annual hunt. Their favorite haunts are the picturesque wilds of the lower James river. They sometimes extend their savage excursions down below the mouth of the James and the fierce and reckless hunters have now and then descended the torturous White river as far as Forsyth. The “Molly Joggers” are a strange tribe of nimrods whose real character no one ever learns till he has been initiated into this fraternity of sportsmen and taken one trip with the hunters.

Woe to the squeamish-hearted tenderfoot who rashly takes the vow to obey the regulations of this fraternity, and sets out with the “Molly Joggers” on one of their autumnal expeditions. The “Molly Joggers” at home are ordinary conventional citizens. Some of them are very prominent businessmen. They are honest and industrious, make money and spend it liberally. … When required to do so by the proprieties of a social function these gentlemen wear dress coats with practiced ease and exhibit those refined manners which the best form of the times demand.” (From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River)

We must forgive our ancestors. They were a pretty “incorrect” group!

“Vintage Ozarks” is a feature we provide to the monthly publication, River Hills Traveler.  Lens & Pen Press  publishes all color books on the Ozarks. James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River is a 352-page all-color book that looks at the effect of development on a famous float stream and our efforts to protect riverine resources. Once the James River, which flows through Springfield, was the premier float-fishing stream of the Ozarks.  Even though transformed and still changing, the watershed of the James Fork of the White is still in many places scenic and beautiful. It is available for $31.50 postage paid.

Indian Creek McDonald County – timeless

 Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Oct 292024
 

                                         Real photo postcard: Indian Creek Scouts, Anderson, MO. September 4, 1913

“Shall we gather at the river? The beautiful, the beautiful river?” Familiar lyrics bring images such as this to mind. Since before photography people have gathered at the river to play, to relax, to share momentous events and ceremonies like baptizings.

Indian Creek flows from the north into the Elk River in McDonald County. The clear, spring-fed streams of the Ozarks have always attracted folks for recreation. As this photo attests, Indian Creek outside Anderson has long been a magnet for summer recreation – fishing, swimming, boating, for generations. Today, it still attracts recreationists. Indian Creek is noted for spring floats especially, with 25 miles of a good, steady, fast run through relatively undisturbed countryside, despite its proximity to development. The Conservation Department has developed an access point to Indian Creek right in Anderson. The Dabbs Greer Town Hole Park and Access is in Anderson on Main Street next to the Post Office.

Describing a pleasant day’s float, the NW Arkansas Democrat Gazette (July 25, 2013) waxed eloquent:  “…Indian Creek, an Ozark waterway that is truly a stream of dreams.” –

This and many other vintage images of Ozarks recreation and activities are now in the collection of the Ozarks Studies Institute at MSU.

The Payton’s book on early tourism and recreation in our region, See The Ozarks: The Touristic Image, is now available on the website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $22.50 (10% off retail price of $24.95), postage paid.

Meramec Cave – early tourism

 Damming the Osage, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
Oct 012024
 

              Real photo postcard. Entrance to Meramec Cave in Stanton, Missouri. Probably 1930s

Caves have been inhabited and served as the stage for mythological tales in most cultures, past and present. Indigenous peoples used Missouri’s numerous caves for shelter long before Europeans arrived. For a century and a half after that, it was mined for saltpeter (potassium nitrate, which is used in the manufacture of fireworks, fluxes, gunpowder, etc.), and was even named “Saltpeter Cave.” By the time this photo was taken Meramec Cave had a well-known history.

After the Civil War, local residents found more genial uses for the cavernous space like celebrations, music events, and “cave parties.” In 1933, Lester Dill bought the cave and turned his marketing talents to its promotion. His billboards still dot our highways. But more significant to the evolution of tourism, Les is credited with the invention of the bumper sticker. While visitors toured the cave, Dill sent “bumper sign boys” into the parking lot to tie (no stick-‘em or glue those days) Meramec Caverns bumper signs on their cars. He got free advertising; visitors had another souvenir.

The Corps of Engineers had ambitious plans for the Meramec River and its surrounding landscape:

“A fifty-one-page booklet published in 1966 by the University of Missouri Extension Division summarized the master plan the Corps and other state and federal groups had to take over the entire Meramec basin.

In 1949, they undertook an ambitious planning process to build three reservoirs in the Meramec basin. They invited fourteen other state and federal agencies to participate in a grandiose improve­ment scheme. By 1965, they proposed thirty-one reservoirs, small, medium, and large, that would transform the region into a land of lakes and a motorboat paradise.”

Lawsuits were filed. The public was alerted:

“Don Rembach and Roger Pryor and other cavers and geologists brought out the fact the dam was not only built on a fault, it was in such a karst area it might not hold water. Mr. St. Louis Zoo and national TV star, Marlon Perkins, made a short film of floating the beautiful Meramec that was shown in movie theaters in St. Louis. Folk singer Tom Shipley wrote a protest song:

Well the generals laugh and the generals gloat /
but the people of Missouri, well they never got a vote /
they’re putting up a dam and we’re putting up a fight /
on the banks of the Meramec.”

Quoted from Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir.

The original postcard is now in the Payton Ozarks Collection of the Ozarks Studies Institute at Missouri State University.

PEARL SPURLOCK, the Tourist’s Friend

 Beautiful Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Jun 202024
 

Pearl Spurlock, tourist guide and raconteur extraordinaire of the early Shepherd of the Hills days in Branson. “Sparky” was such a legend herself; we used this photograph as a full page illustration in See The Ozarks

Pearl Spurlock became as well known as the characters and locations of Harold Bell Wright’s best-selling 1906 novel, The Shepherd of the Hills. As ‘furners’ traveled to Branson to pay homage to the events and people of the novel, most were treated to the knowledgeable services of “Sparky” – early on by horseback, and later in her car. As they bumped over the rocky hills to Sammy Lane’s Lookout and Uncle Ike’s Post Office, Pearl “not only tells the story in a beautiful and impressive manner, but feels it, … and you feel it must be the first time (she has given it) … It has grown sweeter to her each time it is told.” (Harrison County Times, Bethany, Missouri, Nov. 1, 1934.)

Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, poet of the hills, even penned a tribute to Pearl:

Velvet fingers, but grip of steel,

Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel,

A flashing smile and a kindly hail,

For passing friends on the shining trail;

 

And a fine, sure knowledge of hill and wood,

With legend, tradition, bad or good.

And Pearl Spurlock floats along

With her big car singing its steady song.

 

And yet, I wonder if sometime she

Dreams a dream of the used to be?

When a good horse answered her girlish skill

In a glorious gallop o’er vale and hill,

 

When the summer days passed gay and sweet,

On the little bay mare with dancing feet.

Today the same strong love abides

For her still streams, her mountain sides,

And that is why they all depend

On dear Pearl Spurlock—the tourist’s friend.

The article noted that Pearl was a Harrison County local, as her family was from there, well outside the territory of the Shepherd of the Hills.

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See The Ozarks: The Touristic Image is available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $22.50 (10% off retail price of $24.95), postage paid.

 

Ozark Chair Shop, Beaver Dam.

 James Fork of the White, Lens & Pen Press  No Responses »
Jun 112024
 

Ozark Chair Shop, Beaver Dam.  Real photo postcard.

Although this was called Ozark Chair Shop, for the passing tourist what caught the eye were the colorful drip-glaze pots in many sizes that filled the shelves and yard. Nut head dolls, cedar boxes and wood carvings were more locally made souvenirs sold along the highways.

“You may also see many small jars in a very attractive variety of colors to please the many tourists who stop there. This craft is known as Como-Craft as originated by Harold Horine,” Pearl Spurlock, explained to her passenger.  Her knowledgeable patter informed and entertained many early visitors to the Shepherd of the Hills country. (quoted in See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image).

Beaver Dam on the White River in Arkansas was authorized by the same legislation that authorized Table Rock Dam near Branson. The Army Corps of Engineers webpage for the dam and reservoir notes: Construction began in 1960 and was completed in 1966. Total cost was $6,200,000. James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River has extensive coverage of Table Rock Dam’s history, controversies, and major milestones.

James Fork of the White is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $31.50 (10% off retail price of $35), postage paid.

Scenes along the Mississippi 1848 and 2017

 Irish Wilderness, Lens & Pen Press, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jan 272024
 

Hogan describes the scenery along the river as the tug pulls the clipper ship slowly toward New Orleans, 107 miles distant.

Once I looked out over the ship’s bulwarks and saw we were between what seemed to be two long, low earth-mounds, one on either side of the river; there was a bend in the river at the place. These mounds, on which there were trees and houses and gardens and people, were the first patches of elevated grounds that I saw since the tug took us in tow. I was told they were fortifications or land batteries, Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson by name, guarding the approach to New Orleans from invasion by sea.

At the end of our day of exploring Passe a Loutre we took time to ride and walk through the remains of the two forts Hogan mentions.

Fort St. Philip on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, is only accessible by boat or helicopter. Despite its deteriorating condition, it was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1960. “The earthen works fort was established in the 18th century. Fort St. Philip’s major engagements were 10-day naval sieges during the War of 1812 and American Civil War. The site is privately owned and deteriorating. Recent hurricanes like Katrina have added to the damage.” (Wikipedia)

Fort St. Philip is accessible by boat or helicopter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fort Jackson (below) on the west bank, is a historic masonry fort, constructed as a coastal defense of New Orleans, between 1822 and 1832, and it was a battle site during the Civil War. It is now a National Historic Landmark. It was damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and its condition is threatened

Since 1970, The grounds of Fort Jackson have been the site of both the Plaquemines Parish Fair and Orange Festival. The fort was used to treat oily birds in the early weeks of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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Bishop Hogan recounted his childhood memories and his voyage to America and to the priesthood in Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir, written in 1898 and published in 1907. His second memoir covered his early missionary years on the Missouri frontier, to his consecration as bishop of St. Joseph in 1868.  Our companion volume to Mystery of the Irish Wilderness contains both those memoirs plus additional biographical information I was able to learn from the archives of both the Kansas City-St. Joseph and St. Louis dioceses.

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for 10% off ($22.50), postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com    Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $17.00, postpaid.

 

“The Mouths of the Mississippi”

 Irish Wilderness, Lens & Pen Press, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 202023
 

Thursday, December 14, 1848, Hogan’s ship approached the continent. As the outflow of the Mississippi River reached the Berlin, he wrote:

To a person from the British Isles, the United States, as seen at the mouths of the Mississippi, is a mockery of sublime anticipations.

This is possibly my favorite sentence of all the sentences in both memoirs. Encapsulated in those five words (“a mockery of sublime anticipations”) are the romantic dreams of an Irish schoolboy, envisioning the windswept prairies and their indigenous inhabitants awaiting the word of Jesus that he, that dreaming boy, would bring. Never, in his sunny, clear-day imaginings did a scene like this appear. There before him, the riverine drainage system for most of the North American continent carried its sedimentary load from Rockies and the northern forests, from glaciated plains and lowland swamps to the then-sparkling clean Gulf.  The rich mud of the continent swirled into the waters his clipper ship cut through, clouding them as they fed the richness of the continent to the teaming estuary.

Hogan’s reference to the “mouths (plural) of the Mississippi” I initially thought was a typo or a fault of the optical character reading program we used to convert the print text to electronic files.  But I found him to be precisely accurate in his description when I decided one weekend to explore the areas he described.

Cell phone photo of a chart of the lower Mississippi clearly showing the point at which the river becomes several channels to the Gulf.

 

This scene was acquired by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 24, 2001. This false-color composite was created by combining shortwave infrared, infrared, and near-infrared wavelengths (ASTER bands 4, 3, and 2). Image provided by the USGS EROS Data Center Satellite Systems

“Turbid waters spill out into the Gulf of Mexico where their suspended sediment is deposited to form the Mississippi River Delta. Like the webbing on a duck’s foot, marshes and mudflats prevail between the shipping channels that have been cut into the delta.”

(From NASA Earth Observatory)

 

 

 

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Bishop Hogan recounted his childhood memories and his voyage to America and to the priesthood in Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir, written in 1898 and published in 1907.  Our companion volume to Mystery of the Irish Wilderness contains both those memoirs plus additional biographical information I was able to learn from the archives of both the Kansas City-St. Joseph and St. Louis dioceses.

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for 10% off ($22.50), postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com    Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $17.00, postpaid.

 

John Hogan’s Journey to America – Part 2: Liverpool to the Florida Keys

 Irish Wilderness, Lens & Pen Press, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 092023
 

We left young John Hogan in Liverpool a week (and 175 years) ago. After his arrival from Dublin, he walked the docks and scanned the ships waiting for cargo and preparing to sail. There among them was the Forfarshire, on which he had already engaged his passage to New Orleans. The sight of it was a let-down:

She was a wide, large, dirty, heavy-looking ship. Her sails were anything but snow white, with plenty of pitch and tar splashed on her decks, bulwarks, and rigging; besides, she looked very deep in the water, and near her, on the wharf, there was a whole cargo yet waiting to be stowed in her between decks. I was greatly discouraged, and still more so when I had learned, upon inquiry; that the Forfarshire was a slow ship, her usual voyages between Liverpool and New Orleans being from seven to nine weeks.

Time to rethink that plan. He went to the office of the shipping line where he had his ticket and inquired (politely, of course) as to the possibility of changing his plan. Unlike today’s reservation system, they were amenable to the change (no change fees or separate charges) and recommended another of their ships:

“…the Berlin, an American clipper ship, commanded by Captain Smith, a Boston Yankee. The Berlin is a good ship and a fast sailor.”

This is a public domain image of a three masted clipper ship. I could not find an image of the Berlin itself.

Clipper ships were the sleek, fast, nimble ships of the era, plying the trade routes to China and India and the Americas. Pirates loved them too. They were three-masted vessels (though rarely four-masted) and were fully square-rigged on all masts. Speedy contemporary vessels with other sail plans, such as barques, were also sometimes called clippers. They dominated the seas in the middle third of the nineteenth century, before being phased out by the advent of more modern iron-hulled sailing ships, which eventually gave way to steamships.

Wikipedia has a long list of ships but the Berlin was not among them. Newspapers.com had no mention of the arrival of the Berlin in New Orleans that I could find. Nor did Hogan name the Boston company that owned the two ships. Better researchers than I could probably dig this information out!

Hogan does not mention how he passed his time in Liverpool for the week between the two launch dates, other than one activity, watching the Forfarshire up anchor and head to sea:

The Forfarshire sailed on her appointed day, November 1st. When I saw her leaving port, her dirty sails unloosed in the wind, I considered myself fortunate to be waiting for the Berlin.

John Hogan’s account of crossing the Atlantic is remarkable in its detail. Somewhere in the archives there may be a journal of his early years. It’s hard to imagine he could recall with such detail the days of passage, the sightings of land (the Azores, the Bahamas, weather and climate changes, the change in the night skies), the speed and course of the ship without some personal record. As they rounded the tip of the Florida peninsula, Hogan noted this: “The course we had sailed from Abaco to Key West … was about 300 miles. Time, from 6 P. M. Friday to 10 A. M. Monday, 40 hours; average sailing per hour, 7 ½ miles.”

In later years as Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, he published a small book, Nautical Distances and How to Compute Them for the Use of Schools, dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt. It is a small book, a copy of which is in the archives of the diocese. Interestingly, amazon.com has a listing for this book (published 120 years ago – 1903)…  currently listed as unavailable.

At this point, he was one month from Liverpool and nearing New Orleans, his first destination.

 

 

 

Bishop Hogan recounted his childhood memories and his voyage to America and to the priesthood in Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir, written in 1898 and published in 1907.  Our companion volume to Mystery of the Irish Wilderness contains both those memoirs plus additional biographical information I was able to learn from the archives of both the Kansas City-St. Joseph and St. Louis dioceses.

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for $10.50, postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com    Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $9.50, postpaid.

CAN YOU TOP THESE? Moving ads for Lake of the Ozarks Recreation

 Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 012023
 

Painted aluminum license plate topper, 1940s. Aluminum replaced steel in almost everything due to the World War 2 war effort. As aluminum didn’t rust it continued to be used post war. Below it is a less detailed image of the icon of Lake of the Ozarks, Bagnell Dam. Painted steel. Possibly in the late 1930s.

When Americans took to the highways for family vacations, license plate toppers were affixed to their automobile’s back plate. They advertised a place or business. A few identified the vehicle owner’s profession. They were in vogue before cars were required to have two plates and before automobile designs that don’t have space around the plate for the advertising message. Most are from the 1930s to 1980s. Occasionally one sees a descendant of the topper—a license plate holder advertising a sports team, car dealer, or organization. Bumper stickers advertising “Cowboy Bob’s Reptile Ranch” were a topper’s low-class relative slapped on by a teenage lad as you gawked at diamondbacks as fat as a truck tire.

The motif of license toppers of tourist regions, like souvenirs, usually conveyed what was thought to attract visitors or sometimes dramatic architecture or an unusual landscape feature. When Bagnell Dam closed in 1931, Union Electric of St. Louis, its builder, was bursting with pride about the multi-million-dollar hydroelectric project which backed up the Osage River creating 1,100 miles of shoreline. Images of this marvel of modern technology became the region’s icon. Union Electric would be forced to sell these developable properties before a tourism boom. While the public did take tours of the powerhouse, it doesn’t seem likely that very many planned their vacation around witnessing the creation of electricity from running water.

Lazy Days Resort, Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper, marked Vernon Co. Newton, IA. Possibly 1950s. “Fishin’s good” (below) Lake of the Ozarks license plate topper. 1950s? Its graphic style is reminiscent of Jazz Age cartoonist John Held Jr. but there weren’t many promotional artifacts from Lake of the Ozarks during Held’s heyday. No specific business is promoted so it’s unclear what its origins were.

Lake of the Ozarks tourist advertising rarely featured any version of the indigenous population compared to Branson and the Shepherd of the Hills country. This reclining country bumpkin is not accessorized with a jug of corn whiskey or a floppy eared hound. He’s rural, but not a stereotypical hillbilly.

The Vernon Company is still going strong. Founded in 1902, today they employ 500 people producing products branded for promotion. Through the years their design work has been eye-catching. One of their 1950s license toppers of a roller-skating girl with “God Bless America” advertises a Philadelphia Roller Rink. It was on eBay for $395.

Lake of the Ozarks attractions have always been somewhat generic compared to Branson’s specifically regional reasons to visit—float fishing, country music, and frontier history theme parks. Branson’s symbol was Old Matt’s Cabin, domicile of the god-fearing hill folk in Harold Bell Wright’s romantic The Shepherd of the Hills. This bestseller identified the upper White River Hills as a region that had preserved old time ways. Curiously, we’re not aware of license plate toppers with a log cabin or any representation of the anachronistic culture of the place. The two tourist venues have very different beginnings and pitches to vacationers with different promotional strategies.

Our 5,000-piece collection of Ozark memorabilia and souvenirs contains license plate toppers from Lake of the Ozarks but none from Branson. The collection is now owned by Missouri State University Libraries-Ozarks Studies Institute.

Lazy Days Resort seems to have gone out of business around the year 2000. There is a Lazy Dayz Resort and RV Park at Lake of the Ozarks which opened three years ago. Their advertising used a man sipping a drink in a hammock. The reclining hillbilly of the Lazy Days license plate topper has evolved into a lazy tourist.

 

Most Lens & Pen titles are on sale on our website for half price, postage paid.  See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, where you can find many more examples of this contrasting branding, is now $12.50, postage paid.

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