Webster Bluff – HA HA TONKA

 blog, Uncategorized, Vintage Image of the Week  1 Response »
Jul 172016
 

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Webster bluff – Hahatonka
Jas. Bruin. Linn Creek. Mo. Unsent.

The caption on this vintage image seems to indicate that at one time Webster Bluff may have been part of  large holdings of the Snyder family, known as Ha Ha Tonka. A Karst masterpiece of the Ozarks, Ha Ha Tonka – a more dramatic complex of collapsed cave, sinkholes, cliffs than any similar area – fascinated not only wealthy Kansas Citians like the Snyders, whose estate encompassed 5,400 acres but local people as well. And it still does. Ha Ha Tonka is an extremely well-attended state park today, southwest of Camdenton.

This idyllic scene could be recreated today. Google “Webster Bluff”  and you’ll find it’s located in northeast Dallas County in the Lead Mine Conservation Area, which lies about halfway between Camdenton and Buffalo.  You can fish, float, hike and commune with nature at Webster Bluff still.  More than two miles of the Niangua River flow through the almost 8,000 acres of Lead Mine as well as 3.5 miles of Jakes Creek. The Missouri Department of Conservation identifies its highlights:

This forested area contains savanna, glades, and old fields. Facilities and features include boat ramps, an unmanned firearms range, fishable ponds, several intermittent streams, and two permanent streams (Niangua River, Jakes Creek). . . . Lead Mine Conservation Area contains many excellent examples of dolomite glade communities, oak-hickory uplands, and clear running springs.

One of those springs is named Webster as well.

Governor McClurg Excursion Boat on Lake of the Ozarks

 Vintage Image of the Week  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

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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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