HBO’s limited series will officially return for a third season, this time starring Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. Showrunner and creator Nic Pizzolatto is set to direct, along with Jeremy Saulnier (“Green Room,” “Blue Ruin”).
Sep 072017
Sep 052017
Netflix series, Ozark, has a simple plot with big challenges for a deceptively mild-mannered accountant. “With wife Wendy and their two kids in tow, Marty (Byrne) is on the move after a money-laundering scheme goes wrong, forcing him to pay off a substantial debt to a Mexican drug lord in order to keep his family safe.” Marty’s new money-laundering theater of operations is Missouri’s vacation destination, Lake of the Ozarks.
As is often pointed out in the script, this dragon-shaped reservoir has “more shoreline than the state of California.” The floodgates of Bagnell Dam closed on the Osage River in 1931, creating the lake, as detailed in our book Damming the Osage. Its real-life creation does indeed have something in common with the Netflix show.
As our subtitle, The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Dam, indicates, often there are nefarious and hidden motives for building dams. The dam and the lake that piled up behind it were the products of two schemes that could be considered money laundering. The motive for building Lake of the Ozarks had to do with the benefits of financial manipulations—not the production of hydroelectric power. Researching the origins of Lake of the Ozarks, we found subterfuge was integral to the whole scheme to dam the Osage.
A tale of Mexican drug cartels invading the lake’s shores is perhaps not too far-fetched. There is a long tradition of the Ozarks as a homeland of crime and refuge for outlaws. In the nineteenth century, it was known for the brutal irregulars of the Civil War, the James Gang, Younger Brothers, Alf Landon, bushwhackers and later Bald Knobbers. Meth dealers and dopers portrayed in Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone updated the Ozarks’ outlaw reputation to the twenty-first century.
Lake of the Ozarks, on the other hand, didn’t come from backwoods outlaws. It was the brainchild of the president of a Kansas City Land Bank, Walter Cravens, and his partner, Ralph Street. Catastrophic loss of value of farm property and product began soon after World War 1. Long before 1929, farm price values were punctured. Cravens faced bankruptcy having financed hundreds of Kansas farms that were now in foreclosure. Kansas City lawyer Ralph Street had an obsession with building a dam on the Osage. Together they cooked up a scheme to ”launder” the bank’s “underwater” Kansas farms, for Osage River farms that would literally go under water if the dam were built. When Guy Huston, his principal financier went under (bankrupt) Cravens turned to Dillon Read, a New York financial institution, which then hooked into Union Electric.
Union Electric (UE) had no need for hydropower, but—as later revealed in federal charges—UE was running an extensive kickback operation to fund lobbying. This was proven long after the lake was built. We suspect UE went ahead with the lake project to rake off slush funds and probably enrich the management. It was a complicated scheme that we covered in Damming the Osage. Louis Egan, Union Electric’s “moose-tall aristocratic president,” regarded the Lake of the Ozarks as his own private pond where he wined and dined politicians, family, and friends at his twenty-nine room Adirondacks-style log lodge—now called Willmore Lodge, a venue for group or corporate events and home to the Lake Area Chamber of Commerce. Undoubtedly, it was the site of bribes and kickbacks that would ultimately lead to his downfall.
Both Cravens and Egan did time in federal prison: Cravens for his Lake of the Ozarks land-laundering scheme; Egan for his subsequent slush fund conviction.
Walter Cravens appealed his 1928 conviction on 88 counts, but the appeal was denied and in 1933 he began serving a six-year sentence in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth Kansas. “He paid his $25,000 fine in installments. No. 43517 was discharged on February 7, 1937, having served three years and nine months of his six year sentence.” (page 126, Damming the Osage)
“Egan was convicted of violation of the Corrupt Practices Section of the Holding Company Act of 1935. UE paid an $80,000 file. Egan paid $10,000 and was sentenced to two years. His appeals failed and on December 31, 1943, the $68,000—year former executive entered the federal penitentiary at St. Petersburg, Florida.” (p. 127)
We didn’t have this photo when Damming the Osage went to press or we would have used it.
Lake of the Ozarks has always been rumored to be a vacation destination for the St. Louis underworld (mob). We’ve written extensively about tourism in the Ozarks. It would be an exaggeration to call the Lake Sodom and Gomorrah. Branson, founded on Harold Bell Wright’s moralistic, bucolic novel (Shepherd of the Hills), is a stark contrast to Lake of the Ozarks and its Party Cove and cigarette boat races. And now Netflix’s series tags it with Chicago money laundering and drug cartels from Mexico. In Ozark, the ultra violent local criminals are apparently trying to avenge the loss of their land to the lake Cravens started and Egan completed.
We don’t detect much realism in the series but there is a certain poetic resonance. The image of crime in the Ozarks has now entered the twenty-first century. No longer is it just the subject of yellowing newspaper articles, fading sepia photos or local legend. Now, it is the homeland of a mass media mythology.
NOTE – We now have a special running. You can buy Damming the Osage and our new book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River for $52.50, postage paid (a $17.50 savings for the two books).
Sep 022017
With great anticipation we began to binge watch Netflix’s 10-part series titled, Ozark. The promos for this turgid story of money laundering and murder set at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks set the scene: “A financial adviser drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks, where he must launder $500 million to appease a drug boss.” (Starring: Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz).
A few establishing shots were grabbed at Lake of the Ozarks, but the series itself was filmed in Georgia thanks to that state’s generous tax credits for filmmakers. The first episode, set primarily in Chicago, made us ambivalent – not fully engaged. Should we finish the episode? Should we even go on to Episode 2? To our utter amazement, the last scene of that first episode showed Marty Byrde’s (Jason Bateman) first sight of the Lake at a spot we recognized as Lover’s Leap, a precipitous bluff near the drowned town of Linn Creek.
In Damming the Osage, we used a vivid linen postcard of that scene. Chrome sunset colors aside, some changes to the landscape have occurred since this 1940s image was printed. The distinctive rock has lost one upright piece; a small tree is growing through the cracks; and the tree where the postcard model leaned is gone, the grounds charred by a recent campfire. A modern condo building marks the confluence of the Osage (straight ahead) and the Niangua rivers (coming in from the left). Run your jet ski up the Niangua arm of the Lake and you’ll find the remains of Ha Ha Tonka’s trout lake at the base of the bluff where the ruins of the castle are.
Neither of us had ever been to Lover’s Leap (it is not easy to find and is on private land), but this seemed an opportune time to plan a road trip and seek it out – especially since we were headed to Jefferson City to participate in the total solar eclipse and Lake of the Ozarks is right on the way.
Next post will be extensive passages from J. W. Vincent’s Lover’s Leap Legend in Tales of the Ozarks. Vincent was the owner and editor of the Linn Creek Reveille newspaper from 1880 to 1933. Bagnell Dam was built during his tenure and his opposition to the dam is well documented in his paper. Before that controversy, he published a modest booklet of stories that included one account of how the precipice Marty Byrde stood on got its name.
Aug 312017
The Ozarks we know and love is not the dark and sordid region portrayed in the new Netflix series, Ozark. For our first foray into publishing, Leland wrote and designed a photo essay, THE BEAUTIFUL AND ENDURING OZARKS. As Leland has told me many times, the Ozarks is an uplifted plateau where the meandering streams are wearing deep, winding trenches into that long-ago plain. Look out on a distant vista and notice the concurrent summits of the surrounding hills–evidence of that once level plain.
The word “glade” evokes Old English. Visiting one through the year is a poetic experience. In spring, the glades are strewn with wildflowers. Collared lizards dash for cracks in the rocks in summer. Blazing star and purple coneflower color the slopes in fall. Winter reveals the structure of the hills the best. The largest and purest complex of glades is in the Hercules Glades Wilderness in southwest Missouri.
This semi-mountainous region covers southern Missouri, most of northern Arkansas and small pieces of Kansas and Oklahoma touching Missouri.
Map by Tosborn at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Aug 092017
Although there are no big government dams on the James River, Table Rock Dam backs the lower James up almost to Galena. So we covered the genesis of the Table Rock project in our new book, James Fork of the White. There’s no denying that the White River is prone to flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers originally had no faith that dams were a solution to overflows. That would change and much of the White River has been incorporated into a system of multipurpose dams.
Press photo of Forsythe in the 1927 flood taken from Shadow RockRising in the Boston Mountains and flowing through a narrow valley, the White River would rise quickly and put buildings on low ground underwater. The Corps of Engineers’ solution protected most of Branson and Hollister from flooding but permanently submerged most of the agricultural land along the upper White River. Valuable farmland hundreds of miles downstream was protected from normal rises.
As these government dams were premised on flood control (power generation was an option), local advocates like the White River Boosters Association cried out to Congress for relief from floods, supporting the Corps of Engineers’ claims.
Felicity to the new patron of dams required a revised chant from the Missouri business community. When Empire District Electric was considering building Table Rock Dam factory creation was the mantra. Local supporters really didn’t care who built the dam, or why. They just wanted a nice lake, a bigger Taneycomo, at no cost to them.
Sample pages from James Fork of the White can be seen on www.beautifulozarks.com. The book will be available by the end of September. Our earlier river book, Damming the Osage, can be at seen www.dammingtheosage.com)
Aug 052017
Following the gravel road east from today’s crossroads known as McDowell, we found the remnants of a mill that once took its power from Flat Creek. Footings and foundations still resist the work of water, but the building has been gone for a while.
Milldam of the McDowell water mill on Flat Creek. This stream has an average fall of seven feet per mile and with good water can be floated as high up as McDowell – noting obstacles like this milldam.
Water mills were not unique to the Ozarks, but they flowered in the region due to isolation imposed by the deep river-cut terrain and the abundance of spring-fed streams. There were five water mills on Flat Creek alone.
Mills powered by running water were constructed soon after settlement. Overshot wheels drove most, but turbines were common after 1880. Some even employed steam power at the close of the local milling era. The handsome building (below) was the McDowell Roller Mills, which unlike many could produce flour from wheat. Most early mills used stone burrs to grind corn into meal.
Vintage photograph shows a mill at McDowell. This one utilized rollers designed to process wheat. Photograph is courtesy of the Barry County Museum.
James Fork of the White, page 80
Aug 022017
As the release date of James Fork of the White approaches, I’ll be posting some samples of what you will find in the book. All research is not done in libraries or other books. To write a book on a river, you have to learn the river, its people and places. Over the last several years, we have explored the watershed of the James, its tributaries – large and small, the byways, backroads and the small and large towns of its landscape.
We met people and pets, sportsmen with their catches and families recreating on the banks of creeks, playing at Table Rock, or floating the river. We found remnants of past mercantile enterprises. We ate chicken at Crane’s Broiler Fest, joined the crowds at River Jam and sought out the source of the river in Webster County.
Greene, Christian, Barry, Stone, Webster, and Taney counties. Creeks and larger streams. Dams that slow or halt the flow; a dam that wasn’t built. Drainage systems and sewage treatment. We visited them all…
Railroads, highways, dam projects, tourism, the growth of towns, agriculture, industry, media and art, political will, and cultural values—all interact. The river we see today is an outcome of all these forces. Even though transformed, and still changing, the watershed of the James Fork of the White is still in many places scenic and beautiful, and where it lacks aesthetics, it is interesting.
James Fork of the White, introduction
Jul 302017
In anticipation of the upcoming release of his new book, THE LANGUAGE OF TREES, Steve Wiegenstein is giving away five signed copies of his novel, SLANT OF LIGHT the first book of the series. Slant of Light was the runner-up for the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction.
Twenty more days to sign up (open from July 19 to August 19)! More info is available on the Goodreads site – https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/245377-slant-of-light
Jul 222017
Near where the Branson Entertainment Strip (a.k.a. state highway 76) meets highway 13, in a little town once known as Lakeview (now Branson West), hidden in a deep hollow are the decaying facilities of the Lost Silver Mine Theater, which opened in 1983. Not quite lost to history – yet – the concrete steps/seats are gathering moss, woooden letters occasionally flutter to the ground from creaking signage. In the amphitheater at the bottom of the hollow, remanants of stagecraft are melting into the ground. Here the story of the Lost Silver Mine and the Yocum Dollar played out summer nights in the early Branson ‘boom’.
The Lost Silver Mine theater was owned, operated and supplied with a creative narrative by Artie Ayres, who like his father, was obsessed by the legend of the Yocum Dollar. Numerous different story lines have described the origins of the fabled coin (no authentic one has ever been found) and the silver mine where its ore was dug. Despite extensive searches and diligent research, no authenticatable specimen has yet been produced.
The legend itself has been around for 150 years or more. The Yocum (Y-o-a-c-h-u-m is an earlier spelling) brothers arrived in the upper White River country sometime after the War of 1812. They traded with the Delaware Indians who, as the legend says, happened to have a silver mine in the area. The details vary in different versions or more elaborate tellings, but tales of lost mines and buried treasure are not uncommon in this region. One rumored location of the lost mine was at the junction of the James and White Rivers, now under 150 feet of water. Artie Ayres, owner of the Lost Silver Mine Theater and author of Traces of Silver about the legend, has most likely had the best return on this silver investment of all the generations of fortune hunters and tellers of tall silver tales.
Find more extensive background for this entertainment relic on our new book, James Fork of the White.
Jul 202017
Today’s soon-to-be parents research names for the next scion of the family from lists of trendy baby names, popular fiction, rock/pop stars or the hottest chick flick of the season. “Apollinaris” hasn’t made any of these lists for a long time. But in the mid-nineteenth century, naming sources were more limited. Family Bibles, occasionally Shakespeare’s characters, or – in this case – the early saints names were tapped. Today, July 20, on the Catholic calendar is the feast day of Apollinaris, a Syrian saint of the second century, named bishop of Ravenna, Italy by St. Peter himself. He was the first of several Appollinarises who achieved sainthood over the early centuries of Christianity. An auspicious lineage for the name of a miller on clear stream in the mid-nineteenth century Ozarks
In the fall of 1857, John Joseph Hogan made his first exploratory trip to the Ozarks in search of “land for people of small means” (poor Irish immigrants). He and a surveyor explored from Greenville to west of the Eleven Point River and back. Near the Current River they came across a mill, owned by one Appollanaris Tucker:
Traveling by way of Brunswick, Jefferson City, St. Louis, Old Mines, Potosi, Iron Mountain and Frederick Town, I halted at Greenville, in Wayne County, where I hired a surveyor familiar with the country. I examined the lands on the head waters of Little Black River, Cane Creek, Brushy Creek, in Ripley (now Carter) County, and entered four hundred and eighty acres in a body on Ten Mile Creek, making arrangements at once to put men thereon, opening and cultivating it.
With the surveyor I rode westward, across the Current River, by Van Buren, up Pike Creek, thence southward over the great divide east of Eleven Points River as far as the head waters of Buffalo Creek, thence eastward along Buffalo Creek and its tributaries to a ford on Current River. At this place there was a mill and homestead owned and occupied by a man named Appollinaris Tucker; he and his family were the only Catholics known to be residing at that time in that district. At the time of my arrival, Mrs. Tucker was in the last stages of her mortal illness, in which it seemed God’s Holy Will that she should linger until her longings could be gratified to receive the last Sacraments; and, as it happened, from the hands, of the first priest known to have come into that region of country. After Mrs. Tucker’s death, I returned homewards, by way of Iron Mountain, St. Louis, and Hannibal, to Chillicothe.
Mystery of the Irish Wilderness
We tracked in our Jeep the areas that Hogan covered on horseback when we were working on Mystery of the Irish Wilderness. We did find record of the Tuckers’ land purchases, but little else. One of the largest springs in Missouri is Tucker Bay Spring in Ripley County. Its average flow is 24 million gallons a day. Jo Schaper notes that “very little is known about this spring, either geologically or historically. The spring is a boggy, low area (locally known in the Ozarks as a ‘bay’).”
“Appollinaris and Ellen Tucker purchased government land in 1854 and 1856 in Ripley County. . . . There is no record of the mill after the Civil War or what became of Appollinaris. Tucker Bay Spring, large … but curiously unstudied, flows into the Current River.”
Mystery of the Irish Wilderness, caption, page 25