How Rough was “Roughing it in the Ozarks”?

 Beautiful Ozarks, James Fork of the White, See The Ozarks  No Responses »
Aug 032020
 

Real photo postcard, circa 1910. Nothing on the back. Scratched in the negative: “Roughing in the Ozarks.”

The more we looked at this recently acquired postcard, the more we puzzled over it. What was going on? Who were the people? Locals or city folks? The clothes look more store-bought than homespun.  Was it all a setup? It’s not your standard “Life of the hillbillies” postcards sold at tourist shops. So we sent it to Lynn Morrow, Ozarks historian extraordinaire, to ask his opinion. He replied:
What a great postcard, new one to me.  My guesses include some of yours:
I’d guess they are from an Ozark town, the clothes are too good for a subsistence farmer; the “Roughing it in the Ozarks” was a common phrase in sporting and urban newspapers of the day, the traveling(?) photographer and/or locals are just imitating it & I’ve seen it elsewhere, but it is another hint of using an urban influence in the backwoods;
They aren’t too far from town or a sawmill with a dimension lumber shack (it looks like a tree rather than a stove pipe in the background) and the setting looks “Novemberish” to me for the campout; the woman in the background on the horse must be local, and maybe she brought the clothes’ pins to hang the textile on a line that is attached to the tree on the left;
The “T-pee” was popular with the emerging scouting and rural life movement that often included something “Indian” in costume, dress, etc.; the stripped wagon-type tent is surely another mail order product; the one girl in middle looks like she’s doing an Annie Oakley imitation;
The boy may be sitting on a “picnic” table, usually not seen in urban sportsmen images; the box on the ground behind the man on right might be a dry goods box of canned food and/or gear brought to the site;
but, puzzling to me is the apparent bamboo or cane poles that could be fishing poles, but why are they bound/wrapped high up unless that was just for traveling?
Regardless of guesses, the card is a keeper and should be published!
KWTO (Keep Working for the Ozarks),
Lynn
Lynn Morrow is the retired director of the Missouri State Archives’ Local Records Program, Missouri State University alum, and an Ozarks historian. His book, Shepard of the Hills Country: Tourism Transforms The Ozarks, occupies prime shelf space in our office and is festooned with post-it notes.
If anyone knows about it or has another interpretation please let us know.

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Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. You can see sample pages of our most recent book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com.

Lover’s Leap Legends won the bronze medal in the popular culture division of the 2020 Independent Publishers’ Book Awards, an international competition. This year there were entries from forty-four states, seven Canadian provinces and fifteen other countries.

James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River was a finalist in Regional Non-fiction in the 2019 Indie Book Awards. Lens & Pen Press’s earlier river book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, was awarded a silver medal by the Independent Publishers’ Book Awards in 2013.)

Portuguese Point on the Gasconade River

 Beautiful Ozarks, See The Ozarks, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 072020
 

Real photo postcard, 1930s. Written on the postcard, “Looking down on Gasconade River from Portuguese Point. S-243.” Inevitably, photographs of the panoramic landscape contain a figure poised at the edge of the cliff.

There is a bluff called Portuguese Point overlooking the Gasconade River valley about eleven miles south of Dixon, Missouri. It has a splendid view, is easily reached, and photographers and artists, professional and amateur alike, exploit its graphic opportunities. The mystery is, what were the Portuguese doing in the Ozarks? We found a credible explanation in the KJPW’s Old Settlers Gazette, July 26, 1997, in an article by Gary Knehans. Apparently, John Anderson Smith immigrated to the Ozarks in 1858 and ended up in a fertile valley in a bend in the Gasconade. The pioneer had Cherokee blood and apparently, he and his children had Native American features. Fearing prejudice against Indians, he told his neighbors he was of Portuguese ancestry. Smith had a colorful life. Bushwhackers hung him but he survived somehow to die of dropsy in 1922. As he had voted twice for Henry Clay for President, his age was variously calculated at 110 or 116 years old. The article doesn’t cite any references but it’s an interesting and credible explanation.

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Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. You can see sample pages of our most recent book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: hypercommon.com.

Lover’s Leap Legends won the bronze medal in the popular culture division of the 2020 Independent Publishers’ Book Awards, an international competition. This year there were entries from forty-four states, seven Canadian provinces and fifteen other countries.

James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River was a finalist in Regional Non-fiction in the 2019 Indie Book Awards. Lens & Pen Press’s earlier river book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, was awarded a silver medal by the Independent Publishers’ Book Awards in 2013.)

 

Mt. Nebo Arkansas Lover’s Leap

 Uncategorized  1 Response »
Aug 072019
 

Real photo postcard, “Looking north from Lovers Leap, Mt. Nebo, Ark. GNissom Photo.” Circa 1910.

This card is a little battered card with a corner missing, but it captures a pretty cool image. In the distant background is the Summit Park Hotel opened in 1889 by Captain Joseph Evans and the Mount Nebo Improvement Company. This luxury hotel catered to the upper class, and during the summer season as many as five thousand people lived or vacationed there. The hotel burned down in 1919.

One trail through Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Mena, Arkansas now bears the name Lover’s Leap Trail. We found little about the legend from which it got its name, so we contacted the park. Jackie Rupp, the park interpreter, provided this tale, with the following caveat: “I have no idea how old that story is or how accurate. I have no clue about the source of this story. It could have come from someone who used to work here who made it up and passed it along to other people who worked here. It could have come from a resident who lives on Mount Nebo. It could have been written down, and I just haven’t found it. I haven’t found any newspaper articles about a woman who committed suicide up here. I haven’t found anywhere where this particular story is written down. It may or may not be a good idea to include that story in your book.”

The Lover’s Leap tale she often recounts on walking tours of the park tells the story of a woman who worked at the hotel and fell in love with a wealthy man staying there. “One night, he told her to meet him at Fern Lake, a pond below Lover’s Leap. The woman stole off to Fern Lake to meet him but when she got there, she saw him with another woman. She was so distraught she climbed to Lover’s Leap and jumped off, killing herself. “

Mt. Nebo in Polk County, Arkansas, is technically in the Ouachita Mountains, not the Ozarks, but they share some geomorphic and cultural history. One of the highest peaks in Arkansas and now a state park, Mt. Nebo is a popular recreational area.

See sample pages from the forthcoming book, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, on our website: beautifulozarks.com.

Lens & Pen books are available on this website, on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. Their most recent book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River is a finalist in Regional Non-fiction in the 2019 Indie Book Awards. Lens & Pen Press’s earlier river book, Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, was awarded a silver medal by the Independent Publishers’ Book Awards in 2013.

Irish Wilderness – where?

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jan 242019
 

I still get google alerts for key words / concepts from our books on Father John Joseph Hogan and the Irish Wilderness in Missouri’s pre-Civil War Ozarks (Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and On the Mission in Missouri). As we all know, the crawling algorithms that search out those key words can pull up references that have a tenuous link – if any at all – to the topic you’re following.  Such is the case with Google and “Irish Wilderness.”  The combination of those two words has opened my eyes to the fact that the ‘auld sod’, the “emerald isle,” the old home place of myth and (foggy) memory …. has its own still-wild places and its own brand of hardy souls who inhabit said landscape. The most recent alert brought me this from the UK’s Daily Mail:

Widow, 80, who lives an off-grid lifestyle in the Irish wilderness reveals that her late husband is buried in an unmarked grave in her GARDEN– and her only complaint is that she has no one to have sex with anymore

Not quite the alert I was looking for ….but an interesting read nevertheless!

THE LATEST – AND BEST YET – TAKE ON THE OZARKS. Brooks Blevins’ A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 The Old Ozarks

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Sep 012018
 

The ability to integrate anecdotes into concepts isn’t universal among novelists, much less historians. Even rarer is the talent for melding personal observations with academic studies. Brooks Blevins is a writer with both these gifts. This first installment of a trilogy on the Ozarks sets a new standard for the region’s history. Provocatively, he challenges the long-held idea that the Ozarks is an “arrested frontier,” but doesn’t yield to the temptation of revisionists to dismiss all earlier thinking on the subject.  Inappropriately applied concepts are part of our human past.

The seeds of Ozark primitivism came from beyond its borders. Some Ozarkers even watered this weed. They did so for complicated reasons—not the least of which was their inability to devise an original, more realistic narrative to explain their sometimes-difficult existence in a place with negligible political power and an original economy based on small-scale agriculture and extractive industries. Lack of originality in matters of identity creation—either individually or collectively, isn’t unique. It’s unlikely by this late date these deep, romantic roots can be ripped out. Occasional pruning is in order and Dr. Blevins has sharp shears.

A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 1: The Old Ozarks is available at Barnes & Noble in Springfield, and on amazon.com in hardcover ($31.45) and in Kindle editions ($14.95)

 

  • ISBN-10: 0252041917
  • ISBN-13: 978-0252041914

 

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.

The Ozarks to be Setting for Season 3 of HBO’s TRUE DETECTIVE

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Sep 072017
 
Word is apparently getting out – there are outlaws in the Ozarks. The Ozarks has had a reputation for outlawry for generations.  We’ve all known that. In fact we did a post on that just recently.  But all of a sudden – the Ozarks has been discovered as a not-yet-overused location for major media products.  Netflix even titled their crime/meller ten-part series Ozark. Now HBO is reupping the limited series, “True Detective” and setting it in the Ozarks.
Announcements recently filled the trade papers. All with the same description: “Season 3 of True Detective will tell the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks, and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods. Ali will play the lead role of Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas.”
Mahershala Ali Nic Pizzolatto

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”).

Family Gatherings on the River – an Ozarks Tradition

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Jul 012017
 

Although unmarked, this circa 1890 cabinet photograph of a family gathering was acquired locally, and really looks like it was taken beside an Ozark river. Guitars, guns, and gatherings in riverine settings are Ozark traditions. Our ancestors seem to have dressed up a little more for such outings than we do today, but the strong connection between family kinship and nature remains constant.

In The Ozarks: Land and Life, Milton Rafferty described the relationship of Ozarks people and their landscape:

Generations of the same family often lived in the same community so that family history intermingled with the landscape in an uncommon way. Life is integrated with the landscape in a natural way that is understood by everyone. Thus the Ozarker is a kind of homespun Lockian who thinks of the landscape as an object that penetrates the mind and alters the man.

From Chapter 3, “Gravelly Geography,” of our forthcoming book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of An Ozark River.

 

Hogs and Hillbillies

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Jun 272017
 

Real photo postcard by Hall. Probably taken in Stone County, Missouri, but Arkansas sounded more primitive. The hog’s board collar is to keep it out of fenced gardens. Cattle and hogs were released in the woods to feed themselves. The destructive rooting of feral pigs was, and still is, an environmental problem.

Though the hillbilly icon didn’t emerge for several decades, the Ozarks has been depicted as a primitive place inhabited by people living a pioneer lifestyle since the early 1800s. This mythos was rejected by progressive Springfieldians, but in Galena, and the White River Hills, it was a component of tourism.

Arkansas was held to be slightly more regressive than southern Missouri but only slightly so.

(Page 72 in the forthcoming book, James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River.)

COMING THIS FALL: JAMES FORK OF THE WHITE

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Jun 102017
 

In 2012 we published a 304-page book about the transformation of a big, muddy river that rises in the tall grass Kansas prairie then cuts into the northern flank of the Ozark uplift before emptying into the even muddier Missouri River. Damming the Osage is a history of engineering interventions justified by questionable hydrologic theories. Human cupidity orchestrated many of these unharmonious projects.

This October, we will publish our second “river book”: James Fork of the White: Transformation of an Ozark River. In this we look at the watershed of the river that rises in Webster County near Marshfield, wends its way to Springfield, running along its eastern edge and then drains south to Table Rock. The James – unlike the Osage – feels the effects of a major metropolitan area on its watershed. The James was a storied Ozark float stream; the Osage, a prairie-born, rich but unspectacular stream, home to a prehistoric fish.

The James is definitely a different river and this is a different book. More pages (352), more illustrations (because we have more pages!) to examine, discuss and showcase that different river and the people who live and recreate along its course.

Look for it this fall!

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