Webster Bluff – HA HA TONKA

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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.

STEAMBOAT’S COMIN’! The Ruth at Linn Creek

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Jul 052016
 

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The Ruth in Linn Creek Mo
Real photo postcard. J. W. Farmer. Linn Creek. MO.

LOVE this photograph!  You can sense the excitement of a boat’s arrival in river towns:  “Steamboat’s a-comin’! Steamboat’s a-comin’!”  Everyone in Linn Creek headed to the docks to see The Ruth tied up at the landing. They perch on the fence and fill the decks of the steamer to pose for the camera. Look close – a group of girls is gathered on the deck. Perhaps a school excursion?

The Miller County Historical Society reprinted an article from The Waterways Journal (Feb. 25, 1984) titled, “The Osage Is An Important Missouri River,” by James V. Swift. In it, Mr. Swift recounts the histories of a number of steamboats that plied the Osage. This one, The Ruth, built at Tuscumbia in 1908, was 52.5 by 12.2 by three feet and had 25 hp. Her registered tonnage was 13 gross and 8 net, and she had a crew of two. As can be seen in the picture, The Ruth towed a barge just as her sister steamboats had done. The Ruth is shown (in Historical Society records) as being abandoned in 1925.”

Other steamboats on the Osage during this era were the J. R. Wells (of which we’ve posted several pictures), Frederick, Homer C. Wright. Mr. Swift’s article has a great deal more information on the steamboats on the Osage. To read the full article go the Historical Society’s website: http://www.millercountymuseum.org/archives/120109.html )

Note the roof used as advertising canvas. “Feed Stable” on one. And “You can buy as cheap as a (illegible) at The Linn Creek Mercantile Co. Merchandise.” Roadside (or in this case streamside) roofs and barn sides continued as advertising media for generations.

In Damming the Osage, we covered the Corps of Engineers’ efforts to enhance steamboat traffic on the Osage with the construction of Lock and Dam No. 1. We have a whole separate section concerning Lock and Dam No. 1 on our website: http://www.dammingtheosage.com/lock-and-dam-no-1-on-the-osage-river/

Hotel Ha Ha Tonka

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May 312016
 

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Real photo postcard. Written in red ink, “Hotel Ha Ha tonk a MO”. Published by Jas. Bruin Linn Creek, MO. Unsent.

There’s a long and largely unsuccessful history of trying to develop Ha Ha Tonka as a tourist attraction. We’re not sure exactly where this frame hotel was located or who operated it. After Robert Snyder Sr. was killed in a 1906 automobile accident in Kansas City, his sons struggled to justify finishing the castle, which burned in 1942. Look closely at the car … this is an early one! Does anyone have more information on this hostelry? We’d love to hear it.

 

Old Linn Creek 1909 – before Bagnell Dam

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May 192016
 

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“Linn Creek, Mo. Looking N. W. 1909” written in red ink. Real photo postcard, published by G. A. Moulder, Linn Creek, Mo. Unsent.

Linn Creek, seat of Camden County, here seen nestled in its valley near the Osage, seems to have been an idyllic place, especially in memory. Years later, Nellie Moulder wrote of the town drowned by Bagnell Dam in her journal:

Perhaps more than the ‘scenes’, it is the people one remembers, John McGowan, commercial fisherman of early Linn Creek, giving away more fish than he sold; E.M. Kirkham, who organized parades, programs, and picnics and became the orator when need arose; the banker’s wife, proud, haughty, often arrogant, but ever aware of children in the creek, warning them of inherent dangers; jovial Fred Moulder, who loved children, chipping and sharing slivers of ice to waiting children as he came to the ice house for needed ice in his meat counter display. D.P. Moore who loved his dog; dressed “Frank” in a little boy suit to bury him and deeded “Frank” and an acre of land as his own cemetery with a headstone for identification.

Damming the Osage, page 106

The Moulder  family was prominent in Camden County. Young (26 years old) Morgan Moore Moulder was the county’s prosecuting attorney and sought an injunction from the courts to stop construction of Bagnell Dam in the late 1920s.

Natural Bridge Ha Ha Tonka – vintage image

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Apr 132016
 

sc422Natural Bridge Ha Ha Tonka. Real photo postcard, Published by Jas. Bruin, Linn Creek, MO. Unsent.

Missouri has a lot of natural bridges. One of the largest is at Ha Ha Tonka Statte Park, spanning 60 feet and reaching more than 100 feet into the air. The tunnel through it is 70 feet long. It’s not only one of the larger ones in Missouri, it’s definitely the first one pictured. A crude woodcut of this arch appeared in The First and Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Missouri, G. C. Swallow, 1855.

The Natural Bridge is a showcase feature of the Ha Ha Tonka Karst Natural Area in the Missouri State Park acreage surrounding  Robert M. Snyder’s once-palatial country estate.  The park webpage notes: “All of these wonders (the karst features in Ha Ha Tonka park) are the result of the collapse of underground caverns in ancient geological times.”

For a sense of scale, note the four people on the slope above the arch.

 

Ha Ha Tonka, Mo. Can you identify this Mystery Image?

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Mar 182016
 

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Real photo postcard, published by G. A. Moulder, Linn Creek, MO. Unsent. “Hahatonka, MO” pencilled on back.

We’ve gone back and forth on whether these are ruins or some natural rock formations. Obviously, the castle didn’t burn until much later than when this card was published, which we estimate to be the 19-teens or ‘20s. Does anybody know what this represents?

The Moulder family was  prominent in Linn Creek. While I haven’t precisely identified G.A. Moulder, his family had been in Camden County for decades before this photo was published. Morgan M. Moulder was the prosecuting attorney for Camden County when the dam on the Osage was under construction. He, with other town leaders, tried to stop the dam that would drown their community. The family also owned a hotel in town that, ironically, hosted corporate representatives who came to oversee construction. I

In Nellie Moulder’s memoirs of the town before the dam, she  recalled: “jovial Fred Moulder, who loved children, chipping and sharing slivers of ice to waiting children as he came to the ice house for needed ice in in his meat counter display.” (page 106, Damming the Osage)

Old Linn Creek – flooded by the Osage River

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Mar 152016
 

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View of Linn Creek, Mo., written in white ink. Published by G. A. Moulder, Linn Creek, Mo. This appears to show high water on the Osage River and shows Linn Creek flooded to varying degrees.

Linn Creek was built at the junction of the Niangua and the Osage and was subject to flooding. Its hardy citizens preferred occasional floods to being fifty feet under water. The town resisted the Bagnell Dam project and fought Union Electric tooth and claw. The little county seat of Camden County would go under forty feet of water twenty years after this photo was taken when Lake of the Ozarks pooled behind Bagnell Dam. Many of the houses would be moved, some were torn down, some burned – mostly foundations were left.

Dr. Moore’s office in Linn Creek, Missouri

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Mar 132016
 

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Real photo postcard. No publisher.

“Dr. Moore L. C. Mo.” is written in red ink. L.C. is Linn Creek Unsent. Penciled on back, “Linn Creek, Mo.” There appear to be some political advertisements pasted in the window. Shows a horse-drawn carriage, sans horses, and a farm wagon hitched to two mules.

Someone really wanted others to know that this scene was in Linn Creek. It says so on the back and twice on the front.  Linn Creek, the seat of Camden County, in spite of being subject to periodic inundation was a thriving little burg before Bagnell Dam. Linn Creek and Tuscumbia were the last towns to have regular steamboat service on the Osage.

Does someone know who Dr. Moore was?

 

 

Missouri Mules pulling a Fetching Missouri Maid

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Mar 092016
 

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Real photo postcard published by Jas. Bruin Linn Creek, Mo. This card was never mailed but has a penciled message on the back from Georgia Heaton to Merton Heaton: “This is your little Fluzzy in the hack for a ride. The mules & hack belong to J Bruin the photographer. The one on the left mule yst (sic – used) to be our’s but we sold it to Bruin quite a while. This is by the yard gate.”

Cliff over Counterfeiters’ Cave at Ha Ha Tonka

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Mar 042016
 

sc416The wild scenery at Ha Ha Tonka was appreciated by our ancestors. The walls of the collapsed cavern defied development so they look pretty much today like they did a hundred years ago. The story is (and it’s on most websites about Ha Ha Tonka) that a ring of counterfeiters operated out of this region in the 1830s. We don’t know if they used the cave or not but the name has been affixed to this cave, which is currently off limits at Ha Ha Tonka State Park.

A Chicago Sunday Tribune, April 22, 1956, article about Ha Ha Tonka, “Rainbow Trout Brought a Castle to the Ozark Hills,” describes a driving getaway for Chicago readers at the then-relatively-new Lake of the Ozarks. About Counterfeiters’ Cave, writer Marge Lyon gives a few more details: “There a band of men had turned out excellent half dollars, quarters, and dimes until tracked down by one Augustus Jones, deputy sheriff, in 1834.”

In 1956, it cost a dollar to drive to the ruins and “see stones put together as neatly as books in a case, age-old wonders of nature that have remained unchanged despite dams, castles, hard roads, and all other human innovations that have been brought to this area.”

This is a real photo postcard, by Jas. Bruin, Linn Creek, Mo., postmarked Linn Creek, 1910. It was mailed to Georgia Heaton, Joplin, MO. The penciled writing on the correspondence side of the card is too light to read.

BTW – before the name Ha Ha Tonka, this area was called Gunter Spring, for John Gunter, an earlier landowner from Alabama. More on that later!

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