The Weaver Brothers and Elviry

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Tourism, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 272025
 

The Weaver Brothers and Elviry were native Ozarkers whose hillbilly light comedy was successful on the vaudeville stage and in movies. Their “Hill-Billy Review” is shown in this 1930s press photo.

The Weaver Brothers and Elviry became headliners after World War I, and performed with top vaudeville names like Al Jolson, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny and Beatrice Lillie. Elviry’s comic catchphrase was, “If I had my druthers, I druther…”  They starred in movies for Republic Pictures in the 1930s and ‘40s. Elviry (June Petrie) was born in Chicago but raised in rural Missouri. The brothers, Abner (Leon) and Cicero (Frank) Weaver were from Ozark, Missouri. They have their own Wikipedia page.

A staple of early Branson music shows was a rube or hillbilly comic. In recent years some shows have dropped that genre of humor. Much ink, and a little blood, has been spilled over classifying the natives of the Ozarks. Though the term “hillbilly” did not appear in print until 1900, early educated travelers found the character of the southern mountaineer a tad raw, but raw material for literature, nevertheless.

Leon was adept at mandolin, guitar, fiddle and handsaw, while Frank played novelty instruments including a spinning banjo and a one-man band. June could play piano, mandolin and ukulele.

When tourists found backwoods Ozarkers’ anachronistic lifestyle quaint, even reminiscent of our pioneer ancestors, they were deemed “hillfolk.” When locals resisted development, such as dams and highways or were disinterested in changing a vacationer’s flat tire in the rain, they were “hillbillies.”

In the 1930s and 1940s, hillbilly-ness was hot. Some of this was jokey, even demeaning, but many of the portraits of rural rubes were good-hearted. The audience for such fare brought with it a collective recent memory of rural poverty and the lifestyle it dictated. European immigrants and transplanted Okies alike had personal experiences — both positive and negative — with impoverished country life, as well Ozarkers. The hillbilly became a classic American stereotype. Ill-educated, musically talented, unintentionally funny, and fabulously indifferent to the disciplines of the workaday world, their corny predicaments delighted audiences across the land. Even in the Great Depression, their antics were worth the price of admission.

Check out  See The Ozarks: The Touristic Image.  for more information and gorgeous pictures of early tourism in the Ozarks

 

HA HA TONKA – A Phony Indian Name And A Natural Wonder With A Tragic History

 Beautiful Ozarks, See The Ozarks, Tourism, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 072025
 

Ha Ha Tonka castle (upper right corner) seen from the banks of the spring branch. Photograph likely pre-1910.

The fanciful Indian name of the spring below the bluff is attributed to Col. R. G. Scott who came from Iowa to the Ozarks in the 1890s and partnered with R. D. Kelly to acquire the land around Gunter Spring. Col. Scott published the first article extolling Ha Ha Tonka’s natural wonders in an 1898 issue of Carter’s Magazine. In it he claimed the name is Osage for “Laughing Water.”

We don’t know the name of the photographer of this arty picture of the spring branch at Ha Ha Tonka with the young man (or possibly a young woman – what do you think?) gazing across the spring branch below the castle on the bluff, but we’re guessing its builder, Robert M. Snyder, commissioned the shot. (Snyder acquired the spring and lands from Col. Scott). If that’s so, we can date it before October 1906 when the Kansas City millionaire died in a freak car accident. “Robert M. Snyder has brains dashed out against an iron trolley pole,” wrote the Springfield News-Leader. (When did that kind of descriptive writing disappear from journalism?)

Most accounts of his death mention his “boodling” (bribery) problems. At trial he had been sentenced to five years. On appeal the court ordered a new trial, but prosecutors failed to pursue it. Surviving him were his widow and three sons. Not long before, another son had been murdered in Oregon where he was a suspect in a bank robbery. That son had already done time for highway robbery.

The spectacle of the unfinished castle inspired The Kansas City Journal to wax poetic in a 1907 article entitled, “HIS BARONIAL ESTATE: Wrecking of R. M. Snyder’s Ambition to Live in Splendor as a Feudal Lord.” It begins: “A pathetic monument to one man’s unachieved ambition is an unfinished baronial castle on the north slope of the Ozarks.”

Lake of the Ozarks backed up into the trout-stocked spring branch below the castle. The three sons unsuccessfully sued Union Electric, the builder of Bagnell Dam, for damages for their lost trout lake. Snyder’s boys finally finished the great stone mansion, and it functioned for a short time as a hotel before being destroyed by fire in 1942.

Five thousand acres of wild, undeveloped land the castle sits on was purchased by the state of Missouri in 1978 and made a state park. It’s an extreme example of karst topography, which includes the great spring, caves, sinkholes and a natural bridge, making it popular with hikers. The ruins of Snyder’s castle are now a tourist draw. An attempt to architecturally stabilize the gaunt walls was made in the 1980s, but access is limited now due to continued deterioration. Signage tells the tragic tale of the unlucky “boodler” at an observation point near the park’s office.

Vintage Images is a column we provide to River Hills Traveler, a monthly publication on the Missouri outdoors.  Lens & Pen Press publishes all-color books on the Ozarks. Our book, “See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image,” showcases many of the primary tourist destinations across the Ozarks. It is available for $22.50 (10% off retail), postage paid. Click on Buy our Books

Mystic Springs Captured By Gray Bros. View Artists

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Jul 252025
 

Throughout the United States are scenic spots where subterranean waters surface. Attaching “mystic” to the place name is not uncommon and evokes their poetic charm. Eureka Springs, Arkansas has two. This detailed cabinet photograph, circa 1900, by the local photographic firm, shows one of the springs still in its natural state. The second spring, Mystic Blue Springs (not illustrated) today is a deep pool enclosed by a concrete circle. It’s often just called Blue Springs.

Eureka Springs is an authentic Victorian village built on the sides of some of the Arkansas Ozarks steepest real estate. One hundred years ago nattily attired ladies and gentlemen strolled miles of winding paths, pausing to sip the waters of the various springs. Each was held to have singular medical properties.

The myth that spring water would cure cancer or gout has long been debunked but fanciful geologic and aboriginal histories remain about the place. In a Nov. 19, 1959, feature The Helena Daily (Ark) Daily World advanced the absurd theory that the spring waters of Eureka come from the glaciers of the Pacific Northwest in Canada. In that same article, Indian hieroglyphics carved in the limestone ledges of Eureka were said to describe visits from Desoto and Daniel Boone. Mythology aside the article ends with a paragraph that does justice to the continued attraction of the area:

As one walks about in this colorful wonderland, the silence of the woods predominates all conversation. A restful contentment prevails in this, the first home of the Ozark Indian. Here it is easy to know: “nothing in nature is altogether separate, the cooperation and attitude of the woodlands desires a complete pattern of loveliness.”

Vintage Images is a column we provide to River Hills Traveler, a monthly publication.  Lens & Pen Press publishes all-color books on the Ozarks. Our book, “See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image,” showcases many of the primary tourist destinations across the Ozarks. It is available for $22.50 (10% off retail), postage paid. Click on Buy our Books

“ROUGHING IN THE OZARKS”

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 172025
 

Real photo postcard, circa 1910.

This circa 1910 unsent, real photo postcard shows a large family camping out in the woods. We assume it’s a family but the subjects are unidentified so no guarantee. Not that their scribbled title isn’t descriptive, but we wished we knew their names and where they came from. Sadly, we know nothing about the family, place or circumstance. These real photo postcards often have frustratingly specific images, with no written information. They were produced by local photographers or family members and not commercially available.

Still we can see that from three-year-olds to grandparents, no one stayed home. The young equestrian ladies are the only ones mounted, and they are sporting long guns. Females are often shown as active participants in Ozark fishing and hunting.

As for the steeds, according to Crystal’s brother, equine surgeon Dr. Jay Merriam, “The small middle one is probably a mule. The big one standing sideways on the left is probably a Mammoth Jack of a type well known in Missouri. When bred to a horse mare, they would produce a wonderful, large, strong mule that could provide for a family for 20+ years. A real prize. This family is going to prosper.”

Their rude lodging runs from several tents (one like a teepee) to a sawmill shack. The trees are bare and everyone wears a coat. It must be a winter hunt. The Ozarks as a sporting mecca goes way back in time.

Vintage Ozarks is a feature we provide to River Hills Traveler, a monthly publication. Our company, 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. The book is available for $31.50 postage paid. Click on Buy  Our Books to order.

FERN SPRING – EUREKA!

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Jul 082025
 

Each spring in the vicinity of Eureka was held to have a particular medicinal power. Eureka Springs called itself “The City that Water Built.”

EUREKA SPRINGS PROMISED ITS SPRINGS HAD HEALING PROPERTIES

No rusticated place this. Improbably built into the side of some of the Ozarks’ steepest real estate is an authentic Victorian village. One hundred years ago, nattily attired ladies and gentlemen strolled miles of winding paths along hand-cut stone wall, pausing to sip the waters of the various springs. … “The city of healing waters—there’s health in every glass,” was only one of many taglines for the city’s promotional literature. Stories of the diseases cured by Eureka’s springs fall flat now, but the boasts of the place’s overall attractiveness hold up. As one brochure proclaimed:

“The lure of the Ozarks and the all-year charm of Eureka Springs as a place of restful enjoyment is not alone for those who journey in the quest of health. The country surrounding Eureka Springs is a great shaded park and playground, a land of hills and valleys arched with translucent blue on its many cloudless days.” (See the Ozarks, p. 14)

Twenty-first-century tourists are considerably more casually dressed than these two gents. Few today (we hope) believe the spring waters will cure anything but the thirst that comes from touring “the stair step town” on foot.

Vintage Ozarks is a feature we provide to River Hills Traveler, a monthly publication. Lens & Pen Press publishes all color books on the Ozarks, especially its rivers. This image is taken from See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image. This hardback, all-color book on early tourism in our region is sale priced at $22.50, postage paid.  Order the book by clicking on the “Buy our Books” tab.

Fruitful Opportunity in the Ozarks

 Beautiful Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 282025
 

Specialty crops like strawberries, apples and tomatoes, where produced in the hilly Ozarks. As early as the 1870s the rail corporations promoted the region as “the Land of Big Red Apples.”

Sportsmen and vacationers were not the only groups invited to come and see the Ozarks. The Frisco Line’s full-page ad in a 1912 Washington, DC, Star Sunday Magazine asked, “why don’t you take your family to live in the beautiful Ozarks?  A small farm in the Ozarks is the opportunity you need. Think what a wholesome, healthy life it would mean for your children. You can get a small place near good towns, and good schools, as low as $10 per acre.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House books, and her husband Almanzo were typical of these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century settlers. She and Manny bought their farm, Rocky Ridge, near Mansfield in 1894. They practiced progressive farming and she wrote her classic books on pioneer family life.

Through the decades, Ozarks promotional material often mixed appeals to both vacationers and would-be immigrants. Visitors today are seen as potential buyers of condos or second homes. After a lifetime as summer visitors, many people come to live in the region when they retire. Others, who spent their childhood in the Ozarks and their working lives in faraway cities, often return to their roots.

Vintage Ozarks is a feature we provide to the monthly publication, River Hills Traveler. Our company, Lens & Pen Press, publishes all color books on the Ozarks. This image is taken from See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image. The hardback, all-color book on early tourism in our region is sale priced at $22.50, postage paid.  Click on Buy our books .

Shorty Wilks And His Jolly Ranch Hands

 Beautiful Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Jun 192025
 

“Shorty, as everyone called him, was born October 7, 1901,” read the 1965 obituary of Clifford Wilkinson. It mentions his string band called “Shorty Wilks and his Jolly Ranch Hands.” For his day job, he operated a confectionary in Sullivan, Missouri.

We’ve seen “Shorty” identified in one photo as the tall bass player, but in another shot the same gent is holding a fiddle. Calling tall folks “Shorty” wasn’t uncommon and was thought amusing. In his Oct. 28, 1965, obituary in the Tri-County News (Sullivan Missouri), “Shorty” is identified as Clifford Wilkinson. In addition to heading up a string band that played on numerous radio stations and played for dances, he operated a confectionery in Sullivan. He died suddenly at the age of 63 years, 11 months and 26 days.

A Christmas postcard of the Jolly Ranch Hands without the dancers was inherited by Dr. Kenneth Johnson whose mother managed Baecker’s Place, a dance hall just south of Morrison, a village in Gasconade County. Johnson, now a professor at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, grew up in a bedroom “separated from the dance hall by only a thin wall” and recalled falling asleep every Saturday night to the sound of country music. His mother couldn’t recall anything about the band except they hailed from Sullivan. Some on that town’s Chamber of Commerce gave him leads and Dr. Johnson began a quest to identify other groups that played dances at Baecker’s. To his amazement small town Ozark newspapers were full of ads promoting both country and even small/big bands who played VFWs, Grange Halls, and even floored barns.

In addition to the newspaper ads, he discovered a fantastic pictorial history of live music in rural Missouri. The bands all had professional photographs taken for publicity. Johnson collected several hundred and tracked down the few surviving musicians and relatives who identified the performers. A well-produced book, Moonlight Serenade to City Lights: Rare Images of Bands and Orchestras from the Dance Hall Era in Missouri, was published by Reedy Press (2014) from his research. Copies are available from the Gasconade Historical Society for $35.

Most of the images are from the 1940s and ‘50s. The names of the groups capture that era’s ambivalence about identifying commercial country music with the word ‘hillbilly’. Many of the band members dressed in Western togs and added to the leader’s name “ranch hand,” “rambler,” or “rhythm boys.” There were defiant exceptions—”Pappy Cheshire and His Hillbilly Band,” “Missouri Bob and His Hillbilly Pals.” What chord long time KMOX performer Roy Queen and his Brush Apes hoped to strike in listeners is unknown. Roy built a venue near Warrenton that hosted many well-known country performers.

Like the Fredericksburg Military Band, posted earlier, these live dance bands have disappeared from the rural Missouri scene. Its repertoire may have come from commercially printed music or, in the case of the country-western bands, learned from phonograph records. Both genres had a near-folky culture and sound compared to the canned, corporately controlled music that followed. A poignant movie in the mold of The Last Picture Show or Paper Moon could be made centered around the closing of a rural dance hall or the final ice cream social concert of a small-town military band.

A few of the more talented musicians ended up in Hollywood or Nashville. Lawrence Welk’s celebrated South Dakota-born accordionist, Myron Floren, played for a spell with The Buckeye Four and the Shady Valley Gang, a St. Louis countrified group who played regional dances and had a KWK radio show.

Vintage Images is a column we provide to River Hills Traveler, a monthly publication.  Lens & Pen Press publishes all-color books on the Ozarks. Our book, “See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image,” showcases many of the primary tourist destinations across the Ozarks. It is available for $22.50 (10% off retail), postage paid. Click on Buy our Books

Keith McCanse Linked Conservation with Tourism

 Beautiful Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 062025
 

1931 issue of Where to go in the Ozarks by Keith McCanse, subtitled “The Book of the Ozarks.” 138 pages chock full of ads. Includes establishments on the new Lake of the Ozarks. Also includes excellent maps. “Outside the realm of ordinary vacation literature, this publication … serves you with actual, definite facts without exaggeration.”

Keith McCanse’s Scotch-Irish family settled in the Ozarks in the 1840s. His father, George, co-founded a bank and was a true believer in Republican politics. He took his son numerous times on the legendary Galena-to-Branson float trip.

After a stint as a stockbroker in Kansas City, Keith moved his family to Taney County due to touchy health issues. He fished and hunted and became active in organizations like the Isaac Walton League dedicated to the preservation of natural resources. In 1921 he became a game warden and gave talks on the value of protecting wildlife. In 1925, Governor Sam A. Baker appointed him commissioner of Missouri’s Game and Fish Department.

Having expertise in accounting and banking he remade the department, appointing more than 100 deputies, and producing movies and appearing on radio advancing the “gospel of conservation.” McCanse transformed the good-ole-boy political sinecure into a meritocracy, staffed by trained biologists. He increased revenue, grew the state park system from four to fourteen, and fish hatcheries from two to seven. Missouri Game & Fish News was expanded and improved. It became the template for the exemplary Missouri Conservationist magazine.

In 1929, lured by an offer that doubled his salary, he took a job with KMDX, St. Louis. He promoted tourism for the Ozarks, linking it to valuing the native landscape and its fauna. He worked with the Ozark Playgrounds Association and began producing a similar travel guide to theirs listing more than 1,000 places to “fish, camp, tour, play, and rest.” The guides cost fifty cents. Even with the support of the Sinclair Automobile Service Corporation and ads from every resort, town, and village in the region or near to it, given the work involved, Where to Go in the Ozarks probably wasn’t profitable.

Like many, McCanse invested in land near Sunrise Beach on the shores of the new Lake of the Ozarks. The crash of 1929 and the Depression caused the tourism industry to go flat for more than a decade.

Keith McCanse ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor in 1932. He moved to Texas soon after and became involved in real estate promotion and Republican politics. We don’t know the extent of his involvement with conservation after he left Missouri. His role in the creation of a natural image of the Ozarks was significant. He died in 1964.

Vintage Images is a column we provide to River Hills Traveler, a monthly publication.  Lens & Pen Press publishes all-color books on the Ozarks. Our book, “See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image,” showcases many of the primary tourist destinations across the Ozarks. It is available for $22.50 (10% off retail), postage paid. Click on Buy our Books

Bluff Dwellers Cave, Noel

 James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks, Tourism, Uncategorized  No Responses »
May 292025
 

Real photo postcard: “See My Cave:  Bluff Dwellers Cave, Noel, Missouri”

Caves have been inhabited by humans and served as the stage for mythological tales in most cultures, past and present. Bluff Dwellers Cave near Noel, Missouri provided shelter for Native Americans but not the club-bearing Neanderthal pictured in this roadside ad.

Wikipedia’s entry for Bluff Dwellers’ Cave says it was discovered by C. Arthur Browning while checking traps on his family’s land. According to the family, it was a Sunday in April when he felt that telling breeze of cold air indicating a hidden cave. According to the attraction’s website:

In 1925 C. Arthur Browning was checking traps on property his family had owned his whole life when he came across a cool breeze blowing from a limestone outcrop. It was here that Bluff Dwellers Cave was discovered by Mr. Browning when he brought back help. Bob Ford and Bryan Gilmore, employed by the highway department, helped Arthur Browning move loose rock and debris so that he could explore.

Note the mention of the highway department. Highways were being built across southwest Missouri in the 1920s, opening up the possibility of lucrative businesses to serve and entertain the traveling public.

In the mid-20s tourism was “the next big thing,” and many looked to capitalize on it. One of those was John A. Truitt, aka “the Cave Man of the Ozarks.” He had arrived in Noel in 1914, looking for caves to commercialize. His obituary in the Pineville paper stated that “he was employed for a time at “Cave of the Winds” in Colorado. It was there that he heard from tourists of the caves in the Southwest Mo Ozarks.”

“Dad” Truitt was famed for having opened and developed many of the interesting caves of Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas Ozarks, including Ozark Wonder Cave at Elk Springs, Truitt’s Cave and Elk-O-Zar Cave at Lanagan, Bluff Dwellers Cave near Noel and Spanish Treasure Cave south of Sulphur Springs. He has contributed much to the development of this section of the Ozarks for tourists and vacationers.

In a Kansas City Journal, Nov. 13, 1927, profile, “Dad” Truitt claimed to have discovered Bluff Dwellers Cave, that he and he alone felt that telltale cool breeze emanating from the bluff. However, according to the Cave’s records and family history, Arthur Browning was the actual discoverer. “Dad” Truitt only held the contract for managing the touring part of the cave for four years, until 1931.

Bluff Dwellers Cave continues today as an active tourist attraction, still owned and operated by the Browning family.

FREDERICKSBURG MILITARY BAND, CIRCA 1915

 Beautiful Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
May 212025
 

The decorative cardboard mat has the embossed name Schuster Studio, Hermann, Mo. Martin Anthony Schuster was born in 1871, was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and a widely known photographer in the Hermann area. He opened a studio there on Schiller St. in 1910. The first ad we could find for the studio noted that as well as portraiture, they offered film development and printing.

How does a marching brass band cross an unbridged Ozark river? On a cable-driven ferry, of course. This sharp focus cabinet photograph preserves the record of a lost musical tradition and a vanished transportation technology. In its entry about Fredericksburg, the Gasconade Historical Society documents the population of the tiny village in 1879 population at 40. It likely never much exceeded that.

Throughout much of the 20th century the ferry permitted crossing that bridgeless section of the Gasconade River. Originally the little barge was propelled by oars, then a cable system was followed by an outboard motor, and finally an electric motor. In the mid-20th century, a bridge at last rendered it obsolete. Both the ferry and the band survived long after their prime.

The brass band posed on the ferry was organized in 1902. An ad in the May 29, 1953, Advertiser-Courier of Hermann Missouri announced an upcoming performance:

Ice Cream

SOCIAL

St. Peter’s E. & R. Church

Fredericksburg, Mo.

Saturday, June 6,

6 p.m.

Sandwiches and Refreshments

Music by Fredericksburg Military Band

Welcome Everybody

Following the Fredericksburg band promo was the announcement that music by the Charlotte Cornet Band (an even smaller community than Fredericksburg) would be provided for an ice cream social at the Salem Presby Church at Holt, Mo. That the northeast corner of the Ozarks was heavily settled by German immigrants explains how a tiny village could supply five trombone players, four cornet players and several other wind instruments. Most Ozark highland pioneers were of Scots Irish heritage and favored stringed instruments and the ballad tradition of the British Isles.

Vintage Images is a column we provide to the monthly publication, River Hills Traveler. This photograph, along with hundreds more, are among our collection now housed at Missouri State University Libraries-Ozarks Studies Institute.

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