Branding the Ozarks, Lens & Pen Press, See the Ozarks, Tourism, Uncategorized

COMPETING OZARK TOURISM ICONS: Old Matt’s Cabin vs. Bagnell Dam

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The two biggest tourist centers of the Ozarks are Branson and Lake of the Ozarks. While graphics used to promote travel do not necessarily accurately or honestly represent those places, they can betray the character and history of places. Such is the case with the imagery used to advertise and decorate souvenirs of these two attractions.

Souvenirs from the Shepherd of the Hills Country (Branson). Its dominant motif is Old Matt’s Cabin from Harold Bell Wright’s “The Shepherd of the Hills.” Tourism and recreation were not add-ons to a dam and reservoir project here. They long preceded the building of artificial reservoirs and featured fishing and outdoor recreation with the bucolic locals playing a role.

Branson, near the Missouri-Arkansas line in southwest Missouri, began attracting travelers in the early 190s. Harold Bell Wright’s bucolic novel, Shepherd of the Hills, drew attention to the upper White River hills and their rustic inhabitants. Wright portrayed the inhabitants as colorful primitives and locals claimed to be the inspiration for various characters. The Ross house, known as Old Matt’s Cabin, became a symbol of for the area. It decorated brochures and gifts communicating that a vacation in the Shepherd of the Hills country was trip to the trouble-free past.

Lake of the Ozarks souvenirs feature Bagnell Dam, which created the reservoir for hydro-electric power, not recreation or flood control.

Lake of the Ozarks, on the northern flank of the Ozarks was created in 1931 by the closing of Bagnell Dam. This blockage of the Osage River was built by Union Electric (now AmerenUE) to supply electricity. Lacking any comparable settler mythos, pictures of the dam represented the new lake. This wonder of technology was plastered on tourist promotions and souvenirs. From the beginning, its recreational attractions have been hedonistic pleasure, boating, and fishing in the 54,000-acre reservoir. Perhaps the difficulty of picturing the artificial lake led to the inappropriate use of an industrial structure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most Lens & Pen titles are on sale on our website for half price, postage paid.  See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image, where you can find many more examples of this contrasting branding, is now $12.50, postage paid.

 

Lover's Leap, Lover's Leap Legends

Revisiting Noccalula

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On a recent trip to Alabama, I had the opportunity to swing up to Gadsden to see Noccalula once again. Rains had been constant for several days and the stream plunging over Noccalula Falls was full and roaring. It was a chilly late winter afternoon and the sun was reaching toward the horizon. There she was – the cover girl of our book, the great bronze sculpture of Princess Noccalula by Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys, still poised on the precipice.

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Noccalula and the variations on her legend, in poem, prose and song, open the chapter “Waterfalls” of Lover’s Leap Legends: from Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco. She has graced the covers of other publications and has most recently been the star of The Noccalula Experience, “a moving, interactive theater performance in the gorge at Noccaulula Fall,” which ran in the summer of 2019.

Spring travel season is approaching. Those looking for off-the-beaten-path sites to explore can use Lover’s Leap Legends as a guide to romantic tales in spectacular settings across the U.S. and around the world!

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco is available through our website for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), USPS postage paid.

 

 

Lover's Leap, Lover's Leap Legends, Uncategorized

More on Lover’s Leaps of Derbyshire, UK

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In our chapter on “World Lover’s Leaps,” in Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-tee of Waco, we shared a postcard image and brief account of the love and loss of Hannah Baddeley, a well known part of Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire’s local lore. This 18th century tale tells of a beautiful maiden scorned in love and despairing, who flung herself from the precipitous cliff above the small town. Battered and bruised, she survived, but died two years later.

The one-time way station called Lovers Leap Tavern (now called Curry Cottage) was noted in an 1841 issue of “The Monthly Chronicle.” At one time the inn offered unhappy couples contemplating jumping a chance to repair to a room to reconcile.

 

Today’s Google Alerts brought a much expanded explanation of “How Lover’s Leap in Stoney Middleton Got its Name,” in Great British Life. Author Nathan Fearn consulted with Colin Hall of the Stoney Middleton Heritage Group  who confirmed the unfortunate Miss Baddeley was indeed real, baptized in either 1738 or 1739 (18th century script can be hard to decipher) and buried in 1764, a mere two years after her desperate jump.

The small village, south and west of Sheffield, near Peak District National Park, has in its history colorful characters (“Black Harry” an 18th century highwayman, for example), many historic buildings, and a prominent scene in Tom Cruise’s recent Mission Impossible: 7, other tales of romantic love, and lo and behold – he notes two additional Lover’s Leaps in Derbyshire!  One new to us took place at Dovedale. There the legend attached to another promontory is of a heartbroken lass whose lover, she thought, was killed in the Napoleonic Wars. Happily, he was not. Mr. Fearn also describes the leap at Ashwood Dale, which we located as near Buxton. However, both these lovers’ tales come to happier conclusions than the story of forlorn Miss Baddeley. Follow the link to Great British Life for the juicy details and much more.

Spring travel season is approaching. Those looking for off-the-beaten-path sites to explore can use Lover’s Leap Legends as a guide to romantic tales in spectacular settings across the U.S. and around the world!

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco is available through our website for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), USPS postage paid.

Lover's Leap, Lover's Leap Legends, Uncategorized

Sappho – Poet and Legend

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Sappho of Lesbos and other ancient Greeks in the recently redesigned Archeological Museums. With thanks to Joe Yogerst, photographer and colleague!

Here she is – in all her classic sculptural splendor, the leading lady of legend for millennia: Sappho herself. Fabled poetess of fifth century B.C.E. Greece, her passionate leap from the Leucadian cliffs into the Ionian Sea provoked, they said, by despair over unrequited love. On a recent trip through Greece and Turkey my colleague Joe Yogerst, captured her now serene image when visiting Istanbul.  

Sappho’s fame in her own time came from her poetry. Over time, her impetuous and dramatic expression of despair at the indifference of the boatman, Phaeon, grew to legend, transcended national boundaries, crossed time and landscape and is now a feature across the globe.

When Leland found Mark Twain’s account in Life on the Mississippi, of Winona’s near fatal leap from a peak above Lake Pepin, we didn’t know we were embarking on a quest that would range from here to ancient Greece, across the westering American frontier, and to remote island nations of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.  Nope. We just laughed at Twain’s sardonic account and his description of the raconteur who told the tale.

But the quest beckoned and off we went – to find a string, a reason, a common thread for the tales of passionate love so compelling that life without it was not possible. It took a while to get from Lake Pepin in Wisconsin to Cape Leucadia in ancient Greece – but the crumbs were scattered across the millennia, across continents.

Over the centuries her story never faded from cultural memory. Indeed, her woeful saga inspired other romantic tales: Romeo and Juliet was one such tale. But so was the story of lovely Frida, a country lass from the west of England; and the interfaith lovers in eighteenth century Spain who met their fate at La Peña de los Enamorados near the city of Antequera, Málaga Province in Andalusia.

Sappho taking the Leucadian leap, steel engraving from a painting by Richard Westfall. Sappho’s plunge was a favorite theme of nineteenth-century artists.

We found many images of Sappho over the centuries.  Her plunge was a favorite theme of nineteenth-century artists. Pictures of Indian maidens actually jumping off cliffs are rare. However, in Gadsden, Alabama a 9’ tall bronze statue created by the Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys commemorates the leap of Noccalula.

Google alerts most often bring up the Leaps at Rock City, Tenn, Jamaica’s Leap above Cutlass Bay, and (recently) Trincomalee Harbor in Sri Lanka. Road (or sea, or air) trip anyone?

The first account that we found in the new United States was reported by Zebulon Pike (yes the Pike the mountain in Colorado was named for). Before his western explorations, in 1805, he was commissioned to find the source of the Mississippi. As they waited out the weather one night, the grizzled Scottish trapper/trader guide regaled them with tales, one of which was about a young Sioux woman who was being forced into a loveless marriage. Rather than submit, she cast herself from the heights above Lake Pepin (full circle back to Mark Twain!). Pike’s journal of his expedition up the Mississippi was reviewed by the The Baltimore Repertory (Jan. 1811).

Pike’s brief mention of the Sioux woman’s leap from the cliff along Lake Pepin was quoted in full. Then followed a comparison of the Indian legend in the wilderness of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase with a 2,700-year-old classical legend.. . . . . “It was thought that ancient Greece alone had her Leucadian rock; and the desperate leap of Sappho had consecrated it in the eyes of all the enthusiasts of love in succeeding generations. Who would have supposed that the rocks of the Mississippi were destined to be its rival . . .?

Lover’s Leap Legends, p. 47

Princess Noccalula, frozen in her desperate impulse above the falls. Bronze statue by the Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys, Gadsden, Alabama.
  • Sappho of Lesbos and other ancient Greeks in the recently redesigned Archeological Museums. Photo courtesy of Joe Yogerst.
  • Sappho taking the Leucadian leap, steel engraving from a painting by Richard Westfall. Sappho’s plunge was a favorite theme of nineteenth-century artists.
  • View of Lake Pepin in the Mississippi River from Maiden Rock, Wisconsin.
  • Guam. Courtesy Todd Hoose
  • A 25-foot tall statue of the two tragic lovers was created by Philippine sculptor Eduardo Castrillo in 1984.
  • Jamaica’s Lover’s Leap commemorates an enslaved African couple who lept rather than be sold apart.
  • A Muslim knight loved the “daughter of a noble of Antequera.” Unfortunately, she was promised to another, so they eloped. . . .They were buried where they died, at the foot of the Peña de los Enamorados.
  • Princess Noccalula. Bronze statue by Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys, Noccaulua Falls Park, Gadsden, Alabama
Lover’s Leap Legends around the world.

 

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lover’s Leap Legends, Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and others are now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.

Lover's Leap, Uncategorized

Lovers Leap – Sri Lanka

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Ravana’s Cleft, Trincomalee. Seen from the Swami rock (West). credit AntanO/Anton, 2014. Used under creative common license

Courtesy of Google Alerts–a far flung (pardon the pun) Lovers Leap to add to our ‘inventory’ of world Leaps: Sri Lanka in the 17th century. Among destinations featured in The Sunday Observer, “the oldest and most circulated weekly English-language newspaper in Sri Lanka since 1928,” is the dramatic plunge of a heartbroken maiden into an angry sea:

“The story of Lovers Leap is a sorrowful tale of unrequited love in which Francina Van Rheed, the daughter of a Dutch official, engaged to a young Dutch officer who broke off the engagement upon the end of his foreign service. Forsaken and distraught, she watched atop Swami Rock as the vessel carrying her faithless lover passed beyond the horizon in 1687. Overcome by sorrow, she flung herself into the violent sea – a drop of 400 feet.”

Had we known of this dramatic location and heart breaking tale, it would have made our book, Lovers Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco.

Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lovers Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.

Lover's Leap

Valentine’s Day approaches – Lovers Leaps again in the public imagination: Brimham Rocks

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All hail, Google Alerts!

We’re still keeping up on the worldwide phenomena of Lover’s Leaps … the geography that gives real meaning to the phrase “Til death do us part.”  As we pointed out in Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, this is a tale that has come down through millennia (“back in the mists of time,” says Great British Life) from all corners of the globe.

7 romantic walks for Valentine’s day in Yorkshire

Lovers’ Leap – Brimham Rocks

Go to Brimham Rocks and share a story that’s been embedded in the stone (and local folklore) for generations. It’s said that way back in the mists of time, Edwin and Julia were madly in love but were forbade to see each other. Unable to face life apart, they decided to leap from the rocks and spend eternity together. Fortunately, instead of plummeting to their deaths in a gory tumble of limbs and teeth, the couple floated gently to the ground in such a miraculous fashion that Julia’s disapproving father changed his mind and consented to their marriage. Their launch pad to matrimony is now fondly known as Lovers’ Leap.

The tale they recount here differs from the one we found in that today’s tale has both lovers leaping while the 1884 legend we include in the book has only Miss Royst taking the despairing leap. Both have the saving grace of a ballooning skirt saving the day (er – life/lives).

From Lover’s Leap Legends, page 220:

Brimham Rocks (left) are fifty acres of the grit of millstone (a sand-stone once used to grind grain) shaped by weathering and exfoliation into bizarre configurations. These “curious” rock formations not only have a Lover’s Leap, some are thought to resemble elephants, bears, and hippos. It is claimed a few have a Druid or Devil connection. The highest is called Lover’s Leap. In “1766 or 1767,” reported The Leeds Mercury of October 11, 1884, “a young woman . . . by the name of Royst on being disappointed in love, determined to destroy herself by leaping”:

A strong wind was blowing from the west at the time, which inflated her dress in such a manner that she made the descent comparatively unharmed, in the adjoining field, and instead of breaking her neck, only sprained her thumb. She made no attempt to repeat the experiment, which probably cured her hopeless passion, as she lived long afterwards, and died at Kirby Overblow.

Lens & Pen is having a warehouse sale. All titles are now 50% off, postage paid. Lover’s Leap Legends is now $17.50, postage paid (original retail price $35). See our store