Woodruff believed Springfield’s Folk Festival was ‘a lot of freaks’

In the spring of 1934, the Springfield Chamber of Commerce was presented with a very different opportunity to celebrate the Ozarks Empire.  May Kennedy McCord, of KWTO’s radio show “Hillbilly Heartbeats,” was on the advisory committee for the upcoming First National Folk Festival to be held in St. Louis, Missouri, beginning April 29.  Folk-play and…

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Springfield’s Sequiota Park, once a fish hatchery

In 2011 the Springfield-Greene County Park Board held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the completion of a $1.8 million “facelift to the much-needed natural water environment of Sequiota Park.”  Considering the variety and intensity of utilizations of the place over the last century, that expenditure seems justified. Fisher Cave, as the larger cave on the property…

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The Missouri Pacific poetic promotion of Ozark float tripping

Before Jim Owen and later John Morris pitched fishing the Ozarks, the Missouri Pacific railroad lured visitors to “the White River Country in the Missouri Ozarks” with romantic descriptions:  A 1922 Missouri Pacific booklet, 31 pages, photographically illustrated. This gem rhapsodically describes recreational assets of the upper White River. The artist-illustrated cover depicts the target…

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