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STEAMBOAT LANDING @ LINN CREEK – 1911

click to enlarge This hand tinted postcard from 1911 shows one of the small steamboats of the late era of commercial river travel. Published by James Bruin, Linn Creek, Mo. While this is rather late in the history of commercial … Continue reading

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DELEGATION OF OSAGE INDIANS MEET WITH PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE – 1924

(click to enlarge) Press Photo, 8 x 10, dated January 23, 1924 (by UNITED) Official caption pasted on the back of photo: RICHEST INDIANS GREET PRESIDENT. The delegation of Osage Indians, in the Capital seeking additional allowances from their government … Continue reading

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OLD LINN CREEK – before the ‘flood’

(click to enlarge) 8 x 10 press photo captioned “Move Entire Town to Make Room for World’s Largest Artificial Lake” (photo credit: ACME) This press photo dated March 26, 1931 shows what remained of the soon-to-be-covered-with-forty-feet-of-water town of Linn Creek, … Continue reading

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Gatlin’s ROCKY COMFORT Lodge / Boat Yard on Lake of the Ozarks

We can surmise that this is a surveyor’s map of a subdivision of seventy-four lots laid out by then-owners H. O. (Orville) and Ruth Gatlin, notarized on July 6, 1937 by “George Clifford Williams, Notary Public in and for Morgan … Continue reading

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A CREATIVE APPROACH TO DAM HISTORY

Pastoral and Monumental: Dam, Postcards, and the American Landscape is an original take on water resource development. Books on dams are usually politicized, often technical, and unnecessarily rhetorical. Rarely are discourses on river blockages as nuanced as Donald C. Jackson’s … Continue reading

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TWO LAKES – The Artificially Shallow and the Naturally Deep

July 20, 2014: The last Sunday in Colorado, we made a round trip drive along Trail Ridge Road from Estes Park to Grand Lake. Grand Lake – elevation 8,367 feet; formed by glaciation 30,000 years ago; estimated depth, 265 feet. … Continue reading

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Review of MISSISSIPPI RIVER TRAGEDIES: A Century of Unnatural Disaster

From Twain’s portraits of the river and its denizens to romantic photo essays, environmental analyses, and personal memoirs, a river of words about the Mississippi have flowed through the nation’s literary history. It’s an imposing torrent in which to launch … Continue reading

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Osceola residents were not universally in favor of Truman Dam… an Open Letter to the Corps of Engineers, 1997

Consequences (intended or not) and pernicious effects of Truman Dam and Reservoir for residents of the upper Osage River. We received a fat envelope in the mail a few weeks ago that included an “open letter to the Corps of … Continue reading

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Review of THE SCARS OF PROJECT 459: The Environmental Story of Lake of the Ozarks

Pollution at Lake of the Ozarks, complicated by denial and cover-ups Naturally environmentalists are more concerned about the degradation of rivers, especially if they cut through uninhabited, scenic country, than a reservoir whose shores are lined with condos and whose … Continue reading

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Chinese Paddlefish, Vanished Cousin of the American Paddlefish

As paddlefish snagging season nears its end in Missouri, we pay tribute to the its closest cousin, the Chinese paddlefish, (Psephurus gladius), which is likely now extinct. In the not-too-long-ago but far-away genre of story telling is the tale of … Continue reading

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