Henry Doherty, Powersite Dam and the Empire District Electric Company

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Jan 152018
 

Harnessing the power of moving water for profit and community betterment has been an impulse for many an entrepreneur. On the White River, the first dam to close the flow was #Powersite, a small, almost run-of-the-river, dam that held back enough water to ‘fatten up’ the river without drastically affecting the flow or habitat.

Financial overruns caused the initial backers to withdraw their support for building Powersite. Enter New York banker Henry #Doherty who was ‘collecting’ small power companies in southwest Missouri and consolidating them into what became Empire District Electric. He financed the construction of Powersite.

The dam closed in 1913 but White River waters remained warm allowing for fishing and swimming and water sports. The newly formed riverine lake was called #Taneycomo – some said it was a nod to beautiful Lake Como in northern Italy, but the accepted explanation is a mash up of Taney County Missouri. More than forty years later a much bigger dam, Table Rock, was built upstream bringing drastic changes to the #WhiteRiver, Lake Taneycomo and the James Fork of the White.

Like Bagnell Dam, Powersite Dam was started by men who soon encountered financial difficulties and sold out to bigger concerns. The St. Louis investors who organized the Ozark Power and Water Company engaged the Ambursen Hydraulic Construction Company of Boston to build it. Nils Ambursen, a Norwegian immigrant engineer, had designed a hollow cement slab and buttress structure used successfully elsewhere. Replacing the original backers was Wall Street accumulator of energy companies, Henry Latham Doherty. Doherty had already acquired a handful of small utility companies in southwest Missouri that were branded Empire District Electric Company. The White River operation kept its original name until being folded into the Empire group in 1927.

Cutline for this 1933 press photo reads “Col. And Mrs. Doherty watched happily a Christmas party which the Dohertys gave at Coral FLA.”

The next year Doherty organized the National Committee for Birthday Balls, which sponsored dances across the country to raise money for Franklin Roosevelt’s Warm Springs Foundation to treat victims of polio. The president had been paralyzed from the waist down himself with the disease since 1921.

Henry L. Doherty built his holding company Cities Service into a gigantic combination of all three sources of energy–gas, oil, and electricity. His charm and friendship with FDR kept him from many of the problems capitalists had during the New Deal.

From James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River…

LENS & PEN TITLES Also Available at Barnes and Noble

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Dec 292017
 

In the pre-Christmas countdown days, we dropped by our local Barnes & Noble to see the offerings in their regional section. Prominently displayed were four of our titles: just-released James Fork of the White; our previous “river book,” Damming the Osage; perennial favorite, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness; and our early foray into Ozarks tourism, See The Ozarks.

For a small publisher this is a big win!  When our distributor closed its doors last spring, we found ourselves in the same situation many others are in – books with an audience but no avenue to get them on the retail shelves. Unlike amazon.com, major retail outlets are reluctant to set up accounts for small individual publishers. Using regional or national distributors, (like Partners, our former distributor) they can set up one account per distributor and order multiple titles from multiple publishers.  But this was no longer an option for us.

With the publication of our new book, James Fork of the White, and its potentially large audience in our region, Renee Hunt, Community Business Development Manager, at our local  (Springfield, Missouri) B&N helped us contact their main office and we were able to establish Lens & Pen Press as a vendor for Barnes & Noble. The obvious, happy outcome was the sight of four of our titles on the regional shelves during the busy pre-Christmas days.

Happy New Year!

“An Indispensable Book” – Steve Wiegenstein on James Fork of the White

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Dec 052017
 

For an author, it’s deeply gratifying when a reader really understands what you’re doing and why. Steve Wiegenstein’s review of JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE: Transformation of an Ozarks River is that kind of review. Steve understands the subject and our own non-linear style of treating our topics.  Most importantly, he understand the Ozarks, the land, the streams, the people. Steve is the author of a series of historical novels set in a mid-nineteenth century Utopian community named Daybreak in a valley of the St. Francis River in Madison County.  The third in this series, just-published The Language of Trees, has earned high praise.

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

Steve Pokin on James River book: “This is the book for you”

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Dec 032017
 

Last week Steve Pokin, the Springfield News Leader‘s columnist of the unique and sometimes quirky aspects of Springfield, interviewed Leland about our new book, JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE: Transformation of an Ozark River.

In his columns, “Pokin Around” and “Answer Man,” Steve answers readers’ curious queries, investigates puzzles and reveals many of Springfield’s little known facts and interesting personalities. One of In his columns on the (eutrophic) small lakes of Southern Hills subdivision provided needed background information for us as we discussed Galloway Creek and other small tributaries flowing into the James.

We’re gratified that he concluded, “Interested in the James River? This is the book for you.”

Available from our website, www.beautifulozarks.com (postage paid), Barnes & Noble and at amazon.com.

Styron review of JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE

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Nov 202017
 

We were pleased to see Harry Styron’s write up of our new book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River, on his blog, Ozarks Law and Economy.  We spent five years exploring our own James River, once the preeminent float stream of the Ozarks. Harry understood the depth of the research we put into this book:

“Combining these graphics with a penetrating verbal narrative, the Paytons have given us what we all want and need to know about the White River’s largest Missouri tributary.”

Thank you, Harry Styron!

 

Available now at Barnes & Noble in Springfield, on amazon.com, and from our website, postage paid.

Congressman Dewey Short and government officials survey Table Rock dam site

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Nov 102017
 
 
Congressman Dewey Short and unidentified colleagues looking at potential White River dam site in 1941.
On the back of this Townsend Godsey photograph is written, “Table Rock Dam site 9-14-41”
 
Dewey appears to be pointing out the location where the long-delayed dam would be built. Only a month earlier President Franklin Roosevelt had signed the Flood Control Act of 1941, which authorized civil engineering projects such as dams, levees, dikes, and other flood control measures and which included both Table Rock and Bull Shoals dam projects. Headline of the October 11, 1952 Kansas City Times announced: “Start A Big Dam Barbecue And Music At Launching of 76-Million-Dollar Reservoir.” Mayor Claude Binkley of Branson remarked he had ‘hurried to the Ozarks twenty-six years ago’ to be here for the construction start.”
 

TABLE ROCK BLUFF 1940S BEFORE THE DAM

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Oct 102017
 

 Photo from Table Rock Bluff, 1940s.  Still no dam.

Soon after the completion of Powersite Dam (1913) creating Lake Taneycomo, Empire District Electric announced that they would build a larger dam more than twenty miles upstream at Table Rock. However, Table Rock Dam was not built at Table Rock, but about two miles farther upstream on the White River. It was not built by Empire District Electric, but by the Army Corps of Engineers, at a site Corps engineers thought would be better from an engineering standpoint.
The federal government ultimately took dam building away from private companies in the late 1930s. World War II and then Korea delayed construction of many projects. Again, local dam advocates became nervous that the feds would repeat the stalling tactics of Empire District Electric. Construction finally kicked off in the early 1950s.

HOLLISTER FLOOD – 1943

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Sep 162017
 
Hollister flood, 1943
 
The major Corps of Engineers dam-building era was a combination of dubious hydrologic theory propelled by the desire to create jobs during the Depression. Because our ancestors had foolishly developed the floodplains, there was much community support for flood control dams.
Springfield lawyer and land speculator William H. Johnson started building a Tudor-style complex by the train station in 1909 to accommodate tourists. As the faux half-timbered buildings were in the floodplain they were periodically immersed when Lake Taneycomo overflowed.
 
Table Rock Dam has kept the historic district, as it is now called, dry. Still some Hollister and Branson properties have suffered flooding, necessitating government buyouts. Believing the dam would afford complete protection, some people built even closer to the river, ignoring the Corps’ warning.

Lake of the Ozarks’ LOVER’S LEAP

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Sep 132017
 

In a recent post, we promised more details on Lake of the Ozarks’ own Lover’s Leap and one account of the legend that gave it its name

J.W. Vincent, owner, editor and publisher of the Linn Creek Reveille, published the story of Lover’s Leap more than once in his newspaper. It was a popular tale—one he reprinted in his newspaper twice – “in 1879 and again, by oft repeated request in 1886.” His author’s note to his booklet, Tales of the Ozarks (1913) his tone is almost apologetic:

It was written on a regular assignment in the course of the author’s early newspaper work and bears many marks of the writer’s youth, which fortunately for himself if not for his readers, he has never entirely outgrown. The migration of the Delaware Indians and their subsequent contact with the Osages and other tribes is historical though little known—the local incidents are mainly fictitious.

This particular Lover’s Leap legend strayed somewhat from the standard issue tale of an overbearing patriarch preventing the marriage of a beautiful daughter to the handsome brave she loved. In J. W. Vincent’s tale, the maiden herself rejected a powerful suitor for her own true love. No father is mentioned. The unwelcome suitor is a friend of her brother.

In the picturesque and salubrious valley, where “dwelt a powerful branch of the Osages, one of the great nations of the aboriginal inhabitants of our country,” came a band of weary Lenapes, or Delaware, who had been forced westward from their home on the eastern seaboard. The Osages welcomed them and the two groups lived as congenial neighbors in the valley of Linn Creek.

The Chief of the Osage, Okema, was young and handsome, giant in stature. He and the Lenape chief, Marabo, were close friends—and Marabo had a beautiful sister, Winona. Unfortunately for Okema, Winona’s heart belonged to another, Minetas. The players are named; the stage is set.

The denouement takes place at night on the high bluff above the valley, overlooking the junction of the Osage and Niangua rivers far below. Winona leapt from the cliff to escape Okema. An intense fight ensued between the contending suitors and Okema’s braves. Both braves went over the cliff, as well as another of Okema’s braves. It was a dolorous end to unrequited love, but the dramatic tale has left its mark on the spot.

Netflix’s Marty Byrde undoubtedly did not understand the hallowed and bloody ground on which he stood as he launched his own desperate enterprise in Ozark. He should know, though, the fall today mercifully is forty feet less and ends in water.

“LOOKING FOR LENIN” – book review

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Sep 082017
 

Leland bought this book, Looking for Lenin, intrigued at the possibility that it would shed some light on the recent controversy over statues of Confederate soldiers. The book did indeed provide insight, if not solutions, to the violent disagreements over what to do with these relics, which opponents claim are racist and defenders claim are historical artifacts.

Not all Confederate statues have the same esthetic merits. Many are hollow zinc, off-the-shelf items which contrast with one-of-a-kind bronzes by academically trained sculptors. Springfield has a one of the latter in a Civil War cemetery surrounded by headstones of rebel soldiers killed at the battle of Wilson’s Creek in 1861. A young man in a non-militaristic pose tops the monument. A bas relief bust image of portly General Sterling Price is on the side of the marble plinth. The total effect is not militaristic, yet red paint was splashed on it last week. This in spite of guards hired from the Springfield Police by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration. They say they were there, but didn’t see a thing.

We used this image in Mystery of the Irish Wilderness, our book about Father John Joseph Hogan’s colony of Irish immigrants in Oregon and Ripley counties in the deep Ozarks. The settlement failed because of the disruption and violence the Civil War. This particular monument seems appropriately placed, in an elegiac setting. Some apparently do not agree.

Leland’s review on amazon.com: Lenin vs. Lee

This modestly priced, smartly written, and beautifully photographed and designed book on the purge of Communist symbols has given me some insight into the assault on Confederate statues and monuments. The toppling of Vladimir Lenin’s statues in the Ukraine is admittedly dissimilar to the campaign to get rid of Confederate Generals, principally in the southern United States. One difference is the enemies of Lenin monuments are far right, not far left as they are in America.  Both groups however fulfill Yeats’ prophecy in “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity.”

Another similarity is that there doesn’t appear to be any consensus among Ukrainians as to what it all means. A difference is that Lenin has been much more brutalized than our now discredited icons. With one exception that I know about, our Confederate monuments are merely moved or in some cases splashed with paint. Many times, the Ukrainians chop them up and leave their parts scattered about a very disheveled landscape. Artists incorporate parts into bizarre sculptures. To keep large bronze examples from scrap metal pillagers they must be hidden. There is a collector trade in smaller Lenin statues and busts.

Our tributes to rebel generals are a bit better-crafted and more individual than the dull, repetitive, uninspired sculptures of Comrade Lenin. American Beaux Arts works may not be trendy, but they are esthetically superior to the products of the communist propaganda workshops.

Niels Ackermann’s sharp photographs imaginatively juxtapose these cast-off symbols of tyranny in a disordered environment. The running transcriptions of the overall puzzlement of Ukrainian citizens written by Sebastien Gobert are at times hilarious and parallel American puzzlement. A few Ukrainians, like Yevgenia Moliar, curator of art projects of Kyiv Foundation, thoughtfully point out the unanticipated consequences of statue toppling. Officials in favor of statue destruction censor discussion of the subject: “They’ve tried to create a state ideology that condemns any form of criticism.” This, ironically, has caused a renaissance of support for these relics: “In my opinion, nothing did more for the popularity of Soviet symbolism than the current process of decommunisation.”

What I got most of all out of this was a similarity in the diversity of responses to both decommunisation in the Ukraine and purging the memory of slavery in the U.S. Whatever the justification, both campaigns will leave an empty public space with nothing to replace the banished statuary. “The Second Coming” wrote in the beginning essay, “Leninfall is not just an act of violence against history. The empty plinths that litter the towns and villages of Ukraine today, much like the stumps of felled trees, attest to its destructiveness. They become points of convergence for contending visions of national representation, posing the question: What’s next?”

Congratulations to the publisher, Fuel. Last Christmas I gave copies of their provocative book, Soviet Bus Stops, to my wife and two sons. It was well received by this generally critical group. I’ll be purchasing multiple copies of this intriguing book for next Christmas.

The book is available on amazon.com

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