Mar 152016
 

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View of Linn Creek, Mo., written in white ink. Published by G. A. Moulder, Linn Creek, Mo. This appears to show high water on the Osage River and shows Linn Creek flooded to varying degrees.

Linn Creek was built at the junction of the Niangua and the Osage and was subject to flooding. Its hardy citizens preferred occasional floods to being fifty feet under water. The town resisted the Bagnell Dam project and fought Union Electric tooth and claw. The little county seat of Camden County would go under forty feet of water twenty years after this photo was taken when Lake of the Ozarks pooled behind Bagnell Dam. Many of the houses would be moved, some were torn down, some burned – mostly foundations were left.

Dec 192012
 

8 x 10 press photo from Chicago.  4/21/41

The cutline reads: “BAGNELL, MO. – This bantam rooster, caught in the flood that has inundated several Ozark towns, found himself floating on a log down the Main Street of Bagnell, Mo., a new experience worth crowing about.”

Note that this flood happened ten years after Bagnell Dam closed off the Osage River creating Lake of the Ozarks. Note as well that the town of Bagnell is below the dam in what should have been a protected area. If the promised storage reserves are adequate, dams can help prevent downstream flooding. However, if the reservoirs are full and major rainfall or snowmelt occurs upstream (as happened on the  Missouri and Mississippi rivers in 2011), dams can create higher and longer flood crests


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