After the Civil War commenced, boat traffic on the Osage diminished. The Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers (1887) documents the reduced role of river transportation on the Osage: “There was no steamboat commerce above Tuscumbia during the year. Only $45,960 of shipments went upriver while $559,956 worth of railroad ties and lumber was…
Small steamboats, some pushing barges, delivered large parties from Osceola to Monegaw Springs, eight miles upstream, after commercial river traffic had almost disappeared. The effort to finance a railroad from Osceola to Monegaw Springs failed. Attempts to capitalize on Monegaw’s celebrated springs have been persistent, but largely unrewarded. Its geographic isolation has been problematic, and…
Lock & Dam No. 1 on the Lower Osage In 1886, an Osage River Improvement Committee convened and, using Army Engineers plans, challenged Congress to make the river navigable clear to Kansas with a series of locks and dams. After delays, work on the first lock and dam began in September 1895 at Shipley Shoals…
On the first page of the first chapter in Damming the Osage, we wrote: “After being the subject of the real photo postcard, this sixty-eight-pound blue catfish likely became the blue plate special at an Osceola, Missouri café.” Though not uncommon in the Osage River, big fish were newsworthy. Several hundred miles downstream and a…
What in the world is that ball on a stick that pokes up from the bottom left of this real photo postcard marked, “Osage River”? I t’s credited to “Becraft Photog. (21).” We have half a dozen of his mostly of Osceola and the upriver spa, Monegaw Springs, cards. In our book “Damming the Osage”…
Labeled “The Woods in Winter, Grandin, Mo. Hinchey Photo,” this toned real photo postcard is puzzling. When this photo was taken, Grandin was the largest sawmill operation in the world, yet this scene is anything but industrial. Pennsylvania capitalists created the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company and, with the help of thousands of mill hands,…
Garber was a “flag stop” on the Missouri Pacific line, not far from Branson. The train would stop when there were railroad ties to pick up or deliveries for the post office, which also sold groceries, patent medicine and tobacco. Old Matt and Aunt Molly (the Rosses) welcomed tourists and would sign postcards and entertain…
This real photo postcard of Ozark Beach shows three cane-pole nimrods and one fisherman with a rod and reel. They seem to be objects of curiosity to a gaggle of tourists. The note on the back from Barbara to Miss Hattie in Kansas City reads in part, “Ee rode 20 miles from Branson on the…
