Uncategorized – Page 6 – Damming the Osage

THE VILLAGE OF BAGNELL, MISSOURI

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Apr 222013

Photograph, 1920s

The village of Bagnell, Missouri, was a little railhead along the river used mostly for unloading railroad ties that had been rafted down the Osage. There were plans for the railroad to cross the river at Bagnell, but they didn’t materialize. When construction of the Osage River dam began in the mid 1920s, a spur line was built to transport materials to the construction site, in addition to the barges and steamboats that hauled materials

The few years of heavy construction were a boom time for Bagnell. When incorporated in 1926, the town had a bank, a post office, telephone system, stores, a café, gas stations and even a movie theater. But when the dam closed, work and workers disappeared. The highway was routed over the dam, killing the ferry operation across the Osage. Three fires in 1931 nearly spelled doom for the town. Then a huge flood in 1934 destroyed many of the rebuilt businesses. (see “Bagnell in Flood” post on this blog – http://www.dammingtheosage.com/osage-river-in-flood-at-the-town-of-bagnell/).

Today a campground is the main attraction in old Bagnell.

HA HA TONKA LAKE AND DAM

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Feb 272013

2 Real Photo postcards by Strathman Photo

Both postcards have been sent, postmarked Linn Creek, but the dates are obscure – probably 1930s.

The exact origin of the low dam that created Ha Ha Tonka Lake is not clear. It’s possible that Colonel R. G. Scott, railroad promoter and real estate hustler, built it. He came from Iowa about 1890 and with a friend bought or optioned what was then known as Gunter Spring with a large parcel of land. In 1904, Scott sold the land and spring – now fancifully renamed Ha Ha Tonka with a suitable Indian legend to fit the name – to businessman Robert McClure Snyder of Kansas City.

The destruction of this little lake by the construction of Bagnell Dam caused a five year series of lawsuits and appeals. We devoted a significant part of the book (pages 92-97) to the lawsuit and subsequent appeals.

The lawsuit pitted well-to-do people with big egos against a well-to-do corporation with an equally big ego. The first round began in 1930 when UE filed an exception to the award of $902/acre to the Snyder family for the acreage included with the trout lake. The Snyders sued and the lines were drawn. The plaintiffs claimed the new lake had degraded their estate more than a million dollars. High dollar lawyers and a high profile tale brought journalists to cover the lawsuit over ‘scenic beauty versus progress’. Witnesses during the ten-week trial included Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mount Rushmore, and W. H. Wurepel, who painted the mural of Ha Ha Tonka in the Missouri State Capitol. In 1932, the jury awarded the Snyder family $350,000.

Naturally UE appealed. Round Two began in 1935. A new verdict awarding $200,000 to the Snyders caused them to appeal, but Judge Otis denied the motion for a third trial in 1936 allowing the $200,000 judgment to stand.

Today the lake laps up against the old mill dam, but the trout dam is under water.

Steamboats Remembered

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Feb 202013

Steamboats ran up the Osage as far as Osceola when the river was high. Tuscumbia, county seat of Miller County, was a regular stop – a fact commemorated today in this plaque on the new county courthouse.

OSAGE RIVER BLUFFS NEAR OSCEOLA

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Feb 132013

Real photo postcard, Osceola Missouri, 1913

The bluffs along the Osage may not have been as spectacular as the larger bluffs along New York’s Hudson, but they excited a similar esthetic appreciation in the writer of an 1888-something booklet extolling the unappreciated beauties of southwest Missouri:

How grand are thy works, O Master Divine! The Osage and the Sac Rivers vie with each other in their natural beauty. Here their river banks o’er hung with drooping elm or giant sycamore, there long reaches of pebbled, gravelly beach, on and further on great walls of rock and bluff stand boldly forth with the hoar of a thousand ages on their face, and check the waters of the ever flowing streams which bathe their rocky feet as if in conciliation and with peaceful curvette pass onward on the journey to the sea. . . . A coming generation of scenic artists will find, that after the beautiful scenery of Colorado, Utah and the Sierras have been made familiar to the public, they can turn to the hitherto neglected scenery of the Osage and Sac rivers and find gems of surpassing beauty.

We noted that it sort of took, but the painters didn’t come. There was no Osage River Valley School of painting.

Mansion South Side of Linn Creek

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Feb 062013

Real photo postcard

Atop a small hill is a large frame house with an encircling porch (“veranda” they might have called it). In Kansas City or St. Louis, this would probably not have been considered a mansion, but in the more modest circumstances of Linn Creek, it was noteworthy and probably belonged to a doctor or banker or merchant. Linn Creek was the county seat of Camden County, a fairly stable community that was completely submerged by Lake of the Ozarks. The county seat was relocated to a newly created town called Camdenton. New Linn Creek is located farther up the creek and is today a smaller community.

Foster, Missouri Railroad Station and Handcar

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Jan 232013

Cabinet card of Foster, Missouri, circa 1910

The watershed of the upper Osage/Marais des Cygnes, Little Osage and Marmaton rivers is more crisscrossed by railroads than that of the main Osage and contains a number of much-diminished towns like Foster. Today, there is still a bandstand (but the band didn’t play on) and a post office (and with pending budget cuts this may soon vanish).

We spent a brief Sunday morning in Foster (Bates County) not long ago – capturing the photogenic, gradual decay and making friends with a black dog. (dog chasing shadow video) Even smart dogs never quite figure out shadows and reflections.

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.

DEATH OF THE SCHELL CITY BRIDGE

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Sep 262012

Just north and west of Schell City, Missouri, down the old “River Road” are the ruins of an iron truss bridge that for a hundred years spanned the Osage River, connecting Schell City and Rockville. It’s not far from where the Bates County Ditch (which has its own interesting and little known history) enters the Osage. Closed traffic for many years, it fell into the river in February of this year. Sadly each year there are fewer and fewer of these wonderful iron truss bridges. The usual cause of their demise is obsolescence and lack of maintenance. They are replaced by architecturally uninteresting steel and concrete girder bridges. This 317 foot iron bridge became structurally deficient when maintenance stopped.

We have posted here on our website and on YouTube a video tribute and mini history of this iron bridge.

We think the Schell City bridge died a natural death, but there were local rumors that it was dynamited. The history of bridging the Osage River and its tributaries is covered in our new book, DAMMING THE OSAGE by Leland and Crystal Payton, which will be available by December 1.

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