Monthly Archives: December 2014

Branding the Ozarks, Tourism

DEWEY JACKSON SHORT: FROM DONKEY CART ENTREPRENEUR TO U.S. CONGRESSMAN

December 15, 2014 • 0 Comments

We have discovered that the young man standing up in this real photo postcard by famed photographer George P. Hall is in all likelihood the celebrated “Orator of the Ozarks,” oft re-elected Congressman Dewey Jackson Short. It’s likely young Dewey picked up many of his pithy Ozark sayings consorting with the float fishermen he serviced with his donkey cart business. Catering to tourism had been his first paying job. Throughout his political career he remained an advocate of bringing vacationers to the Ozarks. This promotion culminated in securing the funds to build Table Rock Dam whose waters would back up nearly to Galena, ending the famous float trips Dewey once serviced.

We have discovered that the young man standing up in this real photo postcard by famed photographer George E. Hall is in all likelihood the celebrated “Orator of the Ozarks,” oft re-elected Congressman Dewey Jackson Short. It’s likely young Dewey picked up many of his pithy Ozark sayings consorting with the float fishermen he serviced with his donkey cart business. Catering to tourism had been his first paying job. Throughout his political career he remained an advocate of bringing vacationers to the Ozarks. This promotion culminated in securing the funds to build Table Rock Dam whose waters would back up nearly to Galena, ending the famous float trips Dewey once serviced.

In our post on the remarkable Y Bridge that brought tourists across the James River into Galena, Missouri, we mentioned that Dewey Short spoke at the dedication in 1927. The year after he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. During his twenty-four years in Congress Short became nationally known for his colorful speeches, which drew inspiration equally from Shakespeare, the Bible, and vernacular hill speak.

Dewey Short: Orator of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 by Robert S. Wiley. Very interesting account of political and cultural life in the Ozarks between World War I and World War II. Out of print but available used on amazon.com

Dewey Short: Orator of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 by Robert S. Wiley. It is a very interesting account of political and cultural life in the Ozarks between World War I and World War II. Out of print but available used on amazon.com. Click on image of book cover to go to book listing on Amazon.

Though Short had degrees from American colleges and had studied at Oxford and Heidelberg universities he mixed his quotes from the classics with down home witticisms. In Dewey Short: Orator of the Ozarks, Vol. 1 Robert S. Wiley quotes an example of Short’s folky injections given at a Republican banquet and reported in a 1928 Sedalia Capital :

He compared the g.o.p. elephant with the Democratic mule, which he termed a jackass.

“Compare the two,” he said. “The elephant is really an intelligent animal. It can perform in circuses and has been used as a domestic animal – but on the other hand the jackass, can do nothing but bray and kick. It is without ancestry, or posterity.”

Looking through this very readable account of the first half of Congressman Short’s career, when researching the Y Bridge, we came upon the following passage:

Often in later speeches he would reminisce about driving his team of jennies (female donkeys) as a youngster. He would meet salesmen at the train and help them haul their wares and eh would make long hauls of ice from the ice house on James River where winter ice from the James had been packed in sawdust to await summer’s demand for that rare commodity.

By 1911, when he was 12 years of age, Dewey had established a checking account with the bank of Galena. His diary of 1912 discloses that he was busy that summer catering to tourists making float fishing trips on the James River and buying and selling ice.

We remembered the stellar Hall photograph we used in our book on the development of Ozark tourism. Could the nice looking young man driving the donkey cart be young Dewey Short? How many donkey cart operations could one Ozark village support?

See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image by Leland and Crystal Payton. There are hundreds of old images of recreation from the 1800s to the present day in the “Land of a Million Smiles.” Available at a discounted price, postage paid from Lens & Pen Press. Click on image of book cover to buy a copy.

Short authority, Robert S. Wiley, still practices law in Crane, Missouri. We sent him a copy of See the Ozarks and asked his opinion. He wrote back:

Thanks for the beautiful book, well written and informative. Thanks for directing my attention to the Hall photo on page 7. From other photos in my collection, I believe your photo is one of Dewey with his wagon and team of donkeys.

Wiley explained in a phone conversation that he has a photo of young Short driving a four-wheel, two-donkey cart, the rig he likely used when hawking ice. The enterprising youngster, Wiley noted, saved his money for college. He was not only a fiscal conservative at an early age, in high school he gave a hawkish speech on “Our National Defense” delivered on the eve of World War I. His picture was on a tourist postcard when he was twelve and at seventeen his oratory was printed on the front page of the Stone County Oracle.

The crisp image by Hall was one of our favorites already. But that it is an image of the renowned Orator of the Ozarks Dewey Short was a pleasant surprise.

Branding the Ozarks, Tourism

A SUNRISE STROLL BY THE “Y” BRIDGE ALONG THE JAMES RIVER

December 3, 2014 • 0 Comments

Click to enlarge.

Fog obscures the James beneath the Y Bridge at Galena Missouri. There is a riffle under the bridge, but I do not hear it. Looking off the west end of the bridge I can make out a small house and several trailered flat-bottomed boats in the yard. Exiting the bridge I take a left. A few hundred yards down that road looms a huge rusty sign. Incredibly, most of the fragile white neon tubing still outlines the letters. It reads BILL ROGERS MOTEL CAFÉ FLOAT …

There’s no sign the motel is still renting rooms or serving fried eggs and bacon to floaters. A row of rooms is still behind the sign but they have been painted yellow. On a 1950s postcard they are coral. On the back of the chrome postcard is “BILL ROGERS MOTEL RESTAURANT FISHING SERVICE On James River write box 233, Galena, Missouri phone Elmwood 7-2641 air conditioned 15-unit Motel, electric heat, Large, air conditioned Restaurant, Fishing, Tackle and Supply Store. All these have been added to our long-established Float Fishing Service in the Float Capital of the World.”

This whole 1950s Bill Rogers operation looks like an improvident business decision. While Galena could once claim the title of “float capital of the world,” Dewey Short’s big lake was about to swallow up almost all the floatable James River. The 6,323 foot long, 252-foot high dam near Branson would back the White River up the James to within five miles of his “long-established Float Fishing Service” in 1958.

When the White River Division of the Iron Mountain and Southern Railway cut through Stone County before World War I, it opened the possibility of sportsmen detraining at Galena and engaging one of the services that provided a flat bottomed wooden john boat along with a colorful, yarn-spinning, gravel bar cook for an epic five-day float the 125 miles down the James, then the White, down to Branson. The train would haul the boats back and take the fishermen to Galena or wherever they called home.

Real photo postcard of James River circa 1915. Taken by George Hall. Camp Yocum was several miles upstream from Galena. The family settled in the region before 1800 and reputedly issued their own “Yocum Dollars” made by melting silver US and Spanish coins. These were used for trade with the Indians, principally the Delaware. No known examples have survived.

The improvement of roads and modern bridges like the Y made this celebrated ritual even easier. Sports writers immortalized the James and this float for decades. Movie stars, Catholic bishops, and affluent urbanites flooded to Galena to indulge in the ritual.

Congressman Dewey Short’s 4,100-acre chunk of flat water hasn’t completely stopped floating the James, but it cut it off at the knees. There’s almost nothing of the free flowing James below Galena, but there is still a decent one-day experience canoeing from Hootentown down to the Y Bridge takeout. In high water one can put in further up the cliff-lined, forested free flowing James.

The very unusual Y Bridge is readily detectable in this Google Earth satellite image. To the north is the new very sound, but less aesthetic bridge that crosses the James River on Missouri Route 76. After photographing the Y Bridge I wandered south from the west, Galena side of the old bridge.

Click on any image to start slide show of Galena’s river front. Truncated as it is by Table Rock Reservoir, the James is still an attractive, wild, and fishable but shorter float.

Branding the Ozarks, Tourism

ON THE “Y” BRIDGE IN THE FOG: A DIMLY SEEN ART MODERNE MASTERPIECE

December 1, 2014 • 0 Comments

I’m in a still photo, nothing moves. Sounds are as muted as the monochromatic fall colors. Is the sun up yet? The fog makes it hard to tell. Standing on the closed-to-vehicular-traffic bridge across the James River at Galena, Missouri I remember a vintage photograph we bought years ago.

Galena’s 1927 Art Deco bridge was the result of booster civic organizations’ agitation for improved roads to encourage tourism. It helped augment the railroad delivering vacationers to this region of the Ozarks already known as the Shepherd of the Hills. Harold Bell Wright’s romantic novel was set in Taney and Stone counties.

A crowd of some three thousand assembled here on the 23^rd of November 1927 for the grand opening of the new Y Bridge. Probably the unrecorded remarks made by the highway engineers and a Missouri Pacific Railroad superintendent stressed the technical accomplishment of the structure. When built it was the longest concrete arch bridge in the state. The concluding speaker was Dewey Jackson Short, who would run the next year for the U.S. Congress.

This was a golden opportunity to display his oratorical skills to a large group of voters. Unfortunately we have not been able to find the speech he gave to the throng of Ozarkers. Short’s command of English became nationally recognized during his subsequent twenty-two years in Congress. Not only did this self-styled hillbilly have degrees from several small American colleges, he studied at Harvard, Heidelberg University, and Oxford University, and he was a Methodist preacher.

If anyone knows if his remarks were preserved we’d love to hear from you.

The Springfield News Leader did report that Short understood the wonderful bridge would deliver tourists with money in their pockets to the formerly somewhat inaccessible region: “Short concluded his speech with a special plea for further development of the tourist industry in Stone County. He declared that the continuing possibilities of tourist dollars flowing from improved transportation made the local tourist industry stand beside the cow, the fruit, and the hen in local importance.”

Doubtlessly the arch conservative Republican who would later become renowned for his vitriolic opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal’s expansion of the federal government didn’t dwell on the fact the financing of the bridge was a joint state and federal arrangement. As an apostle of old fashioned self-reliance, Short was in theory opposed to federal handouts in any form. People, he lamented, “seemed to be suffering with the gim-mes. It is gim-me this, and gim-me that.” Throughout his career, however, Dewey seemed OK with barrels of dollars rolling in from Washington to his southwest Missouri district. Later many millions of federal funds went into a much larger chunk of government-poured concrete called Table Rock Dam. Recognizing the Congressman’s seminal role in authorizing and funding this huge water resource project they named their architect designed visitor center after the Honorable Dewey Short.

A 1920s real photo postcard taken from a hill across the James from Galena. Not only is the bridge notable for its fork on the east side, it’s a splendid example of Art Moderne design.

Probably no speaker at the dedication commented on the Art Deco design of the Y Bridge. Art Moderne, as this neo-classical variety of Deco is called, became the preferred form for all manner of buildings throughout the country that were subsidized by the Roosevelt administration. The Y Bridge that helped to open up the Ozarks to tourists is a rare 1920s example of what became called Depression or WPA Modern. Thousands of post offices, schools, courthouses and other bridges were constructed in this style. Few are in such good shape or have been preserved unchanged like Galena’s Y Bridge.

A construction company in nearby Republic originally got the contract to build the bridge. They planned to use creek gravel in the concrete, which didn’t meet specifications. The Koss Construction Co. of Des Moines, Iowa said they would employ local labor as much as possible, but would use the required crushed limestone. Possibly they did in the load-bearing part, but the rails look suspiciously like they used the native orange-brown chert that can be seen on the gravel bar below.

Click here to read the National Register of Historic Places registration form for the Galena Y-Bridge. It’s a model of well-researched local history and goes into great detail about the role of the bridge in early tourism. Needless to say, the Y Bridge was enthusiastically included in the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Click on any image to start slide show.