NIGHT HAWKS TAVERN, Camdenton, Missouri

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Jan 092013
 

Real photo postcard, 1935-1945

Inscription on back reads – “We enjoyed a fine meal here today with Toots and Jack.”

Toots and Jack Stotler operated this thriving business from 1933 until selling to Buford and Anna May Foster in 1945. The Fosters changed the name to Night Hawk Café. A stunning large neon sign with a flying night hawk whose neon wings flapped hung over the sidewalk.  The parents of Leland Payton, senior author of Damming the Osage, went on dates to the Night Hawk, driving in from Versailles. Highway engineer Louis Payton rented a room in Versailles and met Ann Lewis Daniels at the Baptist Church.

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Junction of Sac and Osage rivers near Osceola

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Jan 062013
 

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Real Photo postcard, circa 1920

People have been taking pictures from the overlook on Highway 82 above the junction of the Sac and Osage rivers for a long time. Though the scenery along the Osage was not celebrated in oil paintings, locals have long appreciated its pastoral aspects and frequently photographed it.

 

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These photos were taken in March 2010

OSAGE RIVER in Flood at the Town of Bagnell

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Dec 192012
 

8 x 10 press photo from Chicago.  4/21/41

The cutline reads: “BAGNELL, MO. – This bantam rooster, caught in the flood that has inundated several Ozark towns, found himself floating on a log down the Main Street of Bagnell, Mo., a new experience worth crowing about.”

Note that this flood happened ten years after Bagnell Dam closed off the Osage River creating Lake of the Ozarks. Note as well that the town of Bagnell is below the dam in what should have been a protected area. If the promised storage reserves are adequate, dams can help prevent downstream flooding. However, if the reservoirs are full and major rainfall or snowmelt occurs upstream (as happened on the  Missouri and Mississippi rivers in 2011), dams can create higher and longer flood crests

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KAYSINGER BLUFF, Warsaw, Missouri

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Dec 122012
 

Real photo postcard by McKinney

A hundred years before the Army Corps of Engineers Visitor Center was built at the overlook, locals came to picnic and gawk. With a distant view of the Pomme de Terre entering the Osage, and easy accessibility from Warsaw, it was a popular day trip for generations of locals.

We have drawn a blank trying to learn the origin of the name of this overlook. We can’t find a Kaysinger family in any record we’ve seen, or even another name that may sound the same but be spelled differently. The word sounds German and there are a number of German families in Benton and surrounding counties. If anyone knows who Kaysinger was, please leave a comment.

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LOVERS LEAP, LAKE OF THE OZARKS

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Dec 052012
 

Real photo postcard, probably 1940s

Lovers Leap was a cliff near Linn Creek, about which J. W. Vincent, editor of the local paper, penned a fanciful tale of a suicidal India maiden.  Virtually every declivity more than 25 feet high in the Mississippi River valley had a similar legend attached to it. When Lake of the Ozarks filled in 1931, the name stayed but the jump got shorter and the landing in water became more survivable. The little creature poised on the rocks in disregard of its safety appears to be some species of dog.

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LAND OF THE OSAGE

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Nov 272012
 

Postcard, 1950s

We couldn’t fit this one into the book, but it is definitely an unusual image. While Harry Truman was born in Lamar, not terribly far from the stronghold of the Osage Indians, we haven’t seen any association of President Truman and the Osage Nation.

The “Land of the Osage” is not, by the way, just a few counties. It included all of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, and considerable amount of eastern Kansas and Oklahoma before they were exiled to northeast Oklahoma.  What Harry or Lamar had to do with this we are unsure. Puzzling.

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FAIRFIELD (MISSOURI) COVERED BRIDGE

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Nov 212012
 

 Real photo postcard. Penciled on back: “Fairfield Mill in July 1910”

There was a mill and a small manufacturing complex at the hamlet of Fairfield, Missouri on the Pomme de Terre River built, it is said, by Judge George Alexander. He – or rather, his numerous slaves – built a long covered bridge at this spot. Before the Kaysinger Bluff Dam and Reservoir project got underway, the bridge had fallen in, but the stone piers remained. They’re now under the murky waters of Truman Reservoir.

When crossing Truman Reservoir on the Highway 83 bridge, south of Warsaw, look northwest. The town of Fairfield was just up the river from today’s bridge.  .

The history of bridging the Osage River and its tributaries is covered in the new book, DAMMING THE OSAGE by Leland and Crystal Payton, available December 1.

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FORT OSAGE MOVIE

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Nov 132012
 

Movie Lobby Card, 1952

Fort Osage, a 72 minute B movie from Monogram Studio,has Red Cameron guiding a wagon train through Indian Territory. The Osages are unhappy with the Anglo-Saxon immigrants because of the treating-violating proclivities of the white men.

Not that Hollywood was known for authenticity in their portrayal of Indian life, but their scripts of Osages are both particularly inauthentic and rare. The Osage tribe had two headline grabbing periods. The first came before they moved out of their homeland on the Osage River. Their military power was a great concern to President Thomas Jefferson. The second came when they became oil-rich in the 1920s. They were frequently covered by the media. Unlike western Plains tribes, they never fought the cavalry and have thus escaped cinematic treatment.

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BRIDGING THE OSAGE

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Nov 072012
 

 Hand colored postcard, circa 1910

Marais des Cygnes, variously creatively spelled, is the principal extension of the Osage River. Through Kansas it’s a more bridge-able stream, and was crossed in many places by iron truss bridges beginning in the 1870s.

In the background of the low Ott Dam, which once powered a grist mill, is another iron “wagon bridge” as they were called. These bridges were a huge improvement to rural life as the mud bottomed and banked Marais des Cygnes was difficult to ford even in dry weather. Pictures of the construction of these bridges are almost unknown. Once built, there were popular subjects for commercial photographers.  As they disappear, replaced by sturdier but singularly unattractive beam bridges, there is usually a round of nostalgia-fueled protest in the local newspaper.

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PADDLEFISH (SPOONBILLS) AT OSCEOLA

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Oct 302012
 

Trophy Paddlefish

This looks to be taken below the Osceola Dam which was removed when Truman Dam and Reservoir was built. While the primary paddlefish spawning beds were over gravel bars between Osceola and Warsaw, paddlefish on spawning runs would accumulate below this run-of-the-river dam, making them vulnerable to snaggers.

We’ve not run across an authoritative history of the sport of snagging. The two areas most associated with snagging in the 1950s were the Osage River above Lake of the Ozarks and below the big Corps dams on the upper Missouri River. If anybody knows of any articles on snagging before the 1950s or had personal experience – we’d love to hear about them.

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