High Water Linn Creek Mo.
Real Photo Postcard by J. W. Farmer, Linn Creek, Mo. probably around 1920. Unsent.
The Osage could play havoc with your plans. Flooding was a regular event in Linn Creek but it didn’t seem to deter people from living there. Floods were a dramatic and photogenic affair. Even today, a flood brings out the photographers. An obvious question comes to mind: what piece of dry ground was the photographer standing on? Perhaps he was precariously perched on another boat? It’s a great image of a watery world. Hardly a square foot of terra firma is showing!
We’ve posted a number of flood scenes of Linn Creek on this blog. Perhaps several were of a single event, but Linn Creek was hit with rising waters more than once. Despite fairly frequent incursions of the Osage into the town’s streets and homes, the editor of the city newspaper, The Reveille, railed against building Bagnell Dam. J.W.)Vincent understood full well that occasional spring rises were better for the community than permanent inundation of their homes and the most productive land of the river bottoms.
This photo (of a photo) of Joshua Williams (J.W.) Vincent is from page 104 in Damming the Osage. The caption reads:
Before coming to Missouri in 1866, J. W. Vincent’s father, J. S., had worked for Horace Greeley, fought in the Mexican War, been wounded twice by Indians, dug for gold in California, and married an Irish girl in Milwaukee. An 1889 county history classified the newspaper he founded as a “spicy journal in the interests of the Republican Party.” The son (J. W. ) bought the Reveille from his father in 1880 and edited it until his death in 1933.
