Small cabinet card by Moore
Written on the back: “No. 7 Warsaw Flood April 24, 1906. Duplicates 15ȼ Moore’s Gallery, Warsaw Mo.”
As this photo shows, the spur railroad from Sedalia to Warsaw unwisely located its station in the floodplain.
Jan 222014
Jan 152014
Cast aluminum and painted license plate frame, circa 1940s
Lake of the Ozarks filled in 1931 but the Depression and World War II stymied its tourism development. From the late 1940s on, gift shops located along Highway 54 offered hundreds of kinds of objects to verify that you had indeed visited beautiful Lake of the Ozarks. As the lake itself is all but unphotographable — like all reservoirs in existence, a parking lot for water — the favored icon was Bagnell Dam, which it must be conceded, is quite graphic.
By contrast, Truman Dam has all the charm of a gigantic farm pond, with a little center section of brutal concrete – boxy and utilitarian, impersonal, boring. Interestingly, we haven’t found anything like the number or variety of physical souvenirs of Truman to compare with the almost endless numbers of Bagnell Dam vacation memorabilia.
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Jan 082014
Advertising Brochure, 1940s
We devoted a full page (p. 129 to be precise) to the Gov. McClurg in Damming the Osage but we just acquired this ephemeral treasure – a brochure advertising the dining, dancing and photography opportunities available to visitors on their lake cruises. The Sunset Cruise was at 7 p.m.; Nature’s own romance trips, the Moonlight Cruise was at 9; and on the 11 p.m. cruise, vacationers could dance their way into the wee hours to “an excellent selection of music.” Local bands often supplied the music. During the summer of 1955, the Bob Falkenhainer Quartet supplied the rhythms; one of the quartet was Marshall, Missouri high school student, Bob James, now famed jazz keyboardist, producer and arranger. It was an ideal gig for a teenager – play the summer evenings away and swim and water ski through the days.
Before the lake filled, Highway 5 crossed the Osage River at the toll suspension bridge near Linn Creek. While two modern bridges were being built to connect Versailles with Camdenton, the custom built Gov. McClurg ferried cars across the river. It carried twenty cars at a time the mile and a quarter from Lover’s Leap to Green Bay Terraces, an early Lake development. Backed up traffic was common on weekends.
When the new bridges were finished and Highway 5 relocated, the Governor McClurg ferry was refurbished as an excursion boat. Through the late 1930s and into the 1960s, the Gov. McClurg showboat offered day or night lake cruises from its dock at the west end of the Glaize bridge.
When the Lodge of the Four Seasons acquired the Gov. McClurg excursion boat, it was renamed the Seasons Queen.
The boat was named for Joseph W. McClurg, respected citizen of old Linn Creek. He was a well educated, dapper gentleman, who, before the Civil War, was co-owner of the Linn Creek Big Store which did a half million dollars a year business. After the Civil War McClurg was elected to Congress three times and governor of Missouri once (1868). “The soft spoken, religious, teetotalling McClurg could be considered the most distinguished figure in early Osage valley history. Certainly, he was the only personage in the region photographed by Mathew Brady.” (page 54, Damming the Osage)
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Jan 062014
Real Photo Postcards, 1915
Embossed with name of photographer, “McKinney, Osceola, MO” these two unusual images of high water on the Osage were taken on May 30, 1915. The residents seem to take the high water in stride.
Written in pencil on the back of the photo of the woman in the john boat: “All alone on Dank Island. Just as the river was starting over the bank in the front yard.”
Inscription on the back of the photo of the group gathered around the table says: “You can see the water around the big Elm tree where it just starting over. This is Mr. Fort, one of our neighbors, and Mr. McKinney and Bert and myself and one of our kitties by the hat on the table. This is our watermelon table. I will go home Tues. Bettie”
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Jan 022014
Press Photo, August 1, 1928
Photograph is by Love Studio, Pawhuska, Oklahoma. The white lines were the outline for cropping for newspaper or magazine layout. The cutline for the photo states: “Fred Lookout, present chief of the Osage Indians and owner of one of the finest cattle ranches in northern Oklahoma. Lookout has repeatedly urged his tribesmen to economize.”
Lookout was Principal Chief for three terms, serving a record twenty-eight years, much of it during the turbulent oil boom. He attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, but spoke only Osage while conducting tribal business. His wife Julia was a descendent of PA-HIÚ-ÇKA (White Hair) whose grave on Blue Mound near the upper Osage River was desecrated after the tribe departed for Kansas. Their resting place is on a high hill east of Pawhuska, Oklahoma with a panoramic view of Osage County.
Inscription reads:
JULIA MOGRE LOOKOUT, MO-SE-CHE-HE, Born 1-1-1870; Died 2-28-1950. Great Grand-Daughter of Chief PA-HIÚ-ÇKA (White Hair). A true helpmate and devoted mother
CHIEF FRED LOOKOUT, WA-NŐ-SHE ZHIʺ-GA Born 11-17-1861; Died 8-28-1949. The last hereditary Chief of the Great and Little Osage served his tribe with wisdom, integrity and faithfulness.
May they rest in peace
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Dec 192013
Real Photo Postcard, mailed 1905
Sent by Lula G. Davis from Lincoln, Missouri to Miss Edith Belle Ordway of Haverhill, Mass., on December 6, 1905 showing “a scene in our county – at Warsaw on the Osage.” This real photo postcard shows the swinging bridge built by Joe Dice across the main Osage. After discussing her upcoming trip to New Mexico in the “Interesting West,” Miss Davis assures Miss Ordway: “. . . . I too am interested in souvenir postals. I do not think it silly to like beautiful things.”
Today the remaining Joe Dice ‘swinger’ on the main Osage, the same bridge in Miss Davis’ real photo postcard, is a pedestrian walkway at Warsaw with historic marker.
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Dec 162013
Real Photo Postcard, circa 1920
Message on the back makes it sound like this photo was taken for a particular friend. Written in pencil it says: “Osage River near Osceola. Here are some river (pictures) near Mrs. MacKenny made for you as we never got to take any while you were here. I guess we will go to Alba the last of the week.”
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Dec 152013
The last of three bridges designed by Svedrup and Parcel dynamited and replaced by new span.
December 8, 2014 – Missouri’s highways and transportation commissioner pushed the plunger, detonating dynamite on a 740 foot section of the Hurricane Deck bridge that once carried Highway 5 over the Osage River arm of Lake of the Ozarks. According to the bridgehunter.com website, the 1936 bridge was ‘structurally deficient’ and clearly the highway department agreed. The steel will be pulled out of the lake and the rest of the bridge will be taken down in additional demolitions in coming weeks.
Video from Springfield TV station, KOLR-10, shows the demolition blasts and collapse of the first spans to be dropped into the lake.
Early in the development of the Lake, Sverdrup and Parcel, a St. Louis firm, was engaged to design and construct bridges to connect communities in Morgan and Camden counties that were now cut off from each other. When Damming the Osage was published (2012), the 1936 Hurricane Deck bridge – which was named the most beautiful bridge in its class that year by the American Institute of Steel Construction – was the last remaining span over the lake by that firm. Additional information is available at Bridgehunter.com http://bridgehunter.com/mo/camden/hurricane-deck/
Leif Sverdrup, a Norwegian immigrant, with his college engineering teacher, John Parcel, founded the company in 1928. During World War II, General Sverdrup became chief engineer for General Douglas MacArthur.
Among many distinctive spans, the firm also designed the graceful twin bridges that cross the Missouri River at Jefferson City.
Sverdrup and Parcel also designed the pair of steel-through-arch bridges crossing the Missouri River at Jefferson City (Cole County, Missouri) in 1955. These spans still carry traffic on the multi-lane freeway of US 54/63.
(click on image to enlarge)
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Dec 102013
The title of Harry Styron’s blog – Ozarks Law and Economy: How People, Businesses and Nature Compete – doesn’t fully cover the wide range of topics and interests he shares with his readers. Not a dry law and economy blog – Harry (a Branson attorney) writes of the Ozarks he knows and reflects on its image in movies and literature, the history of land and people and the legal and political issues that affect them all in a lively style with erudite insights.
We were very pleased that last week he posted a penetrating review of our new book, Damming the Osage.
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Dec 102013
Real Photo Postcard, circa 1930
Ha Ha Tonka is a cornucopia of karst features – springs, caves, cliffs, sinkholes and a natural bridge., was described in a 1940s brochure: “the 600-acre tract includes all the natural wonders of the place, among which are a 90-acre lake, with a wooded island; a spring producing 158,000,000 gallons of water daily; a natural bridge; seven caves, one of which has been explored for a distance of about two miles and which contains the largest known stalagmite; a natural amphitheater; and many curious and fantastic formations, such as the Balanced Rock and Devil’s Kitchen.”
Now a very popular Missouri State Park, Ha Ha Tonka was originally the property of the Snyder family in Kansas City. Robert Snyder Sr. built a stunning ‘castle’ there on a bluff overlooking the Osage. When Bagnell Dam created Lake of the Ozarks, the family sued Union Electric over the swamping of their trout lake by the backwaters of the new lake, claiming that it had degraded the value of their estate by more than a million dollars. Courtroom fireworks attracted national media coverage and appeals kept the case going for more than five years. In the end, the Snyders received a judgment of $200,000 which probably about paid for the legal fees. We covered this colorful trial and the high profile players and courtroom action extensively in Damming the Osage. Check a couple of previous posts for more info
