The Box, the Belt, the Hinge

Back today to the site of my mysterious ruin in the woods. Now in 20-degree weather with a dusting of snow, I had a broom and rake to help me uncover and measure the length and width of the ruin so far: 11 feet by 10 feet. Didn't bring a shovel or trowel; today, the soil was damp and my goal was getting the site cleared. I raked up a lid of a small white plastic box which shows damage, as if from heat, along one edge. It's packed full of earth. Then, uprooting and discarding clumps of grass growing between the concrete slabs, I found a woven belt, frozen and plastered with dirt and moss, its buckle well-rusted. (Click the photo to see the items in detail.)

Just as I was about to leave, thinking about the tools required for tomorrow, I noticed sticking up between the slabs a rusty man-made object. Ruining my gloves, I dug around it by hand. Really and truly it was stuck. It had a bend in it that forced me to dig deeper and in a different direction and discover that a tree root had anchored it in place. With all my strength I snapped this root and released the object. It looks like a rusty hinge, but I brought it back to the house to let the damp soil on it dry overnight, so I can clean it with a toothbrush tomorrow and give us all a better idea of what it looks like. I will also clean the belt. One more find in the dampish, nearly frozen earth looked like a finger ring. I hoped it was. But it was a pop-top ring. Those came into use in 1965; whatever happened to this site happened later.

The Gate That's Gone

This property once had gates at its entrance on Highway F, with gateposts of pink Missouri granite. The gateposts had been wired to have lights on top, but I never saw them with lights. Only these two photos of the gate were taken, because within a year of my moving here permanently the gates were dynamited for highway widening. Today I found these printed photos from early summer '02 and wanted to show you and preserve some of the history of this place. The concrete top of one gatepost got dropped in the yard where it still is, sinking into the earth. I took a few bricks of pink granite as souvenirs from the rubble when the dynamiters were gone for the day. They actually did yell "Fire in the hole!," and pictures fell from the walls, and explosions at random every day for two weeks (we were honeymooning at home) made us jumpy.

Highway F was torn away down to rock, the rusty one-lane bridge destroyed, and the intersection was closed so that after work we either parked at the barrier and walked a quarter mile to the house, teetering on broken rocks, or drove an 8-mile detour to get to the house from the other side.

The highway department told the landlord it'd take the land by eminent domain if the landlord didn't grant or sell the 1 acre needed to widen the highway, shortening our lane by 20 feet. I think in exchange the landlord asked that the first 100 feet of the lane, from Highway F up to my house, be freshly paved. It sorely needed paving.

What Does "Ozark" Mean?

We say “Ozark” but where did that name come from and what does it mean? Is it French, perhaps formerly “Ozarque”? Is it Indian? Which Indians, the Osage, or maybe the Sioux, who named Missouri, calling it Oumisourite, meaning “men with large canoes”? I wondered.

Although the name “Ozark” is fixed on maps by 1815, its origins are unclear. The most common explanation goes like this:

The Arkansas River was a great trade route flowing from Pueblo, Colorado (!), through Kansas and Oklahoma and then Arkansas, draining through a huge swamp into the Mississippi. The Quapaw (Sioux) Indians living in its delta were called the Arcansea, from the Sioux word "acansa" meaning "downstream place," and other Indians called that river the Arkansas before Europeans got there. In 1686, Frenchmen established a trading post about 35 miles north of the confluence at a bend on a tributary. They either shortened the word “Arkansas” and called this place “aux Arcs,” or “place of Arcansas Indians,” or, less likely, they called the river bend an “arc” and referred to the place as “aux arc.” Either way, surviving letters from trappers and traders prove that the post was indeed called something like that. Eventually it shared its name with its whole watershed including multiple rivers and mountainous areas to the north and west, including Missouri.

The Ozark plateau, vast as it is, the size of Tennessee, is pretty much a petticoat for the formerly volcanic St. Francois Mountains in east central Missouri. Travel southwest from St. Louis on Interstate 44 about 30 miles and suddenly an ordinary road opens out onto a majestic vista of hills. Those are the Ozark foothills.

Sandy Creek Covered Bridge: Peace

All seemed so crisp and fresh this first day of 2014 that I treated myself to the historic 1872 covered bridge in my own home county, one of the four remaining covered bridges in Missouri. A former toll bridge partly destroyed by heavy weather, it was rebuilt in 1886 with most of its original materials. The Sandy Creek Covered Bridge, on Old Lemay Ferry Road, was closed to traffic and made a state historic site in 1967 and, following the original builder's plans, restored in 1984. It's 18 feet 10 inches wide. The site includes picnic areas, a trail of maybe half a mile, and a small "beach" on the little murmuring creek. In the early days, anyone could build a bridge and charge any toll they felt like until government stepped in. I walked across twice so I'd have paid 6 cents according to this chart. Merchants also posted ads on the inside walls.

Happy Divine New Year! Treat yourself to a historic site sooner than I did. Twelve years in the county and this was my first visit to the covered bridge.

The Old French Trading Post

Toured the private historic site Fort LaCharrette with its proprietor, architectural historian Wheelock Crosby Brown, who showed me around the oldest horizontal-log cabin west of the Mississippi and the fur-trading post founded in 1762 by Frenchman Joseph Chadron and his Osage Indian wife. Lewis and Clark visited Fort LaCharrette, the last white settlement on their way west, in 1804. Brown, a specialist in historic restorations, saved the buildings from ruin and lovingly restored or rebuilt every inch with original materials or as close as he could get. The cabin, trading post and authentic outbuildings perch on a bluff high above the Missouri River near Washington, Mo., and Brown (the bearded guy; degree from Stanford) flies there the old French flag and the 17-star American flag of Lewis and Clark's time. He gives tours, by appointment, to groups or to individuals such as myself. I got to sit in an 18th-century chair hollowed out of a log and upholstered with a blanket, and listen as Brown described the Chadrons' business and home lives. The fireplaces work.

Brown explained that Fort LaCharrette wasn't a military fort. Back then, anyplace people could run for safety and shelter was called a fort. A "charrette" is a wooden wagon (pictured) of the kind that Joseph Chadron filled with furs he bought or bartered from white and Indian trappers, and took down the bluff to a boat and to St. Louis to resell.

Things to remember: "Osage" is from the French "Aux sage," meaning "wise ones." "Missouri" is from the Siouxan, "Ouimisourite," meaning "men of long canoes." Here's another article about Fort LaCharrette.

The Old Tiff Mills

Interviewed a lady named Mary Jean Daugherty who grew up during World War II in Richwoods, in Washington County, next county over from here. She said, "We lived around the tiff mills, that’s what kept Richwoods going."

Q:  Around the what?

A: Tiff, white tiff, that’s what kept Richwoods going.

Q: What is tiff?

A: It’s white rock. I don’t know what they do with it, but we had big trucks come in and haul it out, and they did go dig in the forest. There was a good five mills in Richwoods; that’s what kept the town going.

I Googled "tiff mills" with no results. So I hunted up this bit of Missouri mining history. "Tiff" is a local name for the mineral barite, and Washington County just south of Richwoods had the richest barite deposits in Missouri, and companies tore up the woods to get at it.

Although barely harder than a fingernail, barite will not dissolve in water and is so dense that it sinks through mud and is impervious to radiation. It is the chalky substance in the “barium milkshake” used to diagnose digestive problems, and an ingredient in concrete and important to oil drilling. Ultimately the Missouri tiff mining companies dug up 13 million tons, and after the war found bigger deposits overseas.

The photo at the top is labeled "Tiff Mill, Mineral Point", a tiny town just northeast of Potosi in Washington County. You also see barite from my Missouri mineral collection. When bonded with sand, barite can form "roses" or "desert roses," a geological novelty item. My barite is more of a rosebud, but thought you'd like to see it.

Bethel Methodist Church, Labadie, MO

Built in 1868 in the Greek Revival Style. In 1993 this building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Taken on one of those marvelously unsettled late spring days.

The Roberts Cemetery in Robertsville

In a corner of Robertsville State Park, at the end of a dirt path, in a clearcut beneath electrical wires, the Roberts family forever rests. This face of the larger monument honors Edward J. (1817-1899) and Ann (1826-1852); another side honors their sons who died at ages 2 and 24. Their son James E. Roberts, remembered on another side, was born in 1852 (the year his mother died) and died in 1886. His wife Mary F. Roberts, born in 1848, was the last Roberts buried here, in 1920.  A few of the graves still have the old-fashioned headstones like the one at right; some have no stones, but their names on engraved at the foot of their graves. The monument with the sphere looks modern but is not new; the side with the two boys' names is weather-worn and close to illegible. A locked Victorian-type iron fence surrounds the little family cemetery, which except for memories is a very lonely place.

The Battle of Pacific

At sunrise on Oct. 1, 1864, Confederate General William Cabell and troops set fire to the then-new and modern railroad facilities at Pacific, Missouri, burning them to char, and looted the stores for good measure. They also burned two railroad bridges. On Oct. 4, Union army troops commanded by General A.J. Smith came by rail from St. Louis up to the first burned bridge, and then marched into town to confront the Confederates. The Confederates held the top of this very high hill atop the Pacific silica bluffs, and shot cannons down at the Union army. The Union army shot back. Eight Union soldiers were wounded but none killed. The Confederates withdrew (the number of their casualties is unknown), their work of interrupting Union supply lines already done. Smith's troops then joined in Sherman's March on Atlanta.

About two years ago this hilltop was officially recognized as a Civil War battle site and is now Blackburn Park. The cannon is marked "Steen Cannons, Ashland Kentucky." There's a cannonball welded just inside of the cannon mouth so that it can never be shot.

Doc Sargent, Revealed

Photocopied pages of a local-history book finally reveal the real Doc Sargent who gave his name to a nearby road. Dr. Jesse Sargent (1872-1952) was a country doctor who lived in a stone house with his wife on what became Doc Sargent Road; the house still stands. He is described as "a portly man with mustache and goatee who nearly always wore a gray suit" and drove a Pierce-Arrow. He loved children and from 1917 to 1923 held Christmas programs for them in his home; he also sang in the choir at the Presbyterian church. "For years," Doc got his "simple medicines" from the local "root digger," said to be a freed slave living in a log cabin no longer standing. He was, of course, sometimes paid in eggs or meat or whatever people had to trade for his services. Toward the end of his life, Doc Sargent moved to Springfield, MO, and died and is buried there.