Nov 162014
 

Lens & Pen has launched a new website (in addition to Dammingtheosage.com and our publishing site beautifulozarks.com). HYPERCOMMON.com will be a platform for a wide range of interests, encompassing our more than passing interest in pop culture. One of those varied interests is DAMS – worldwide, as well as those on the Osage River system.

Recently we acquired some new-to-us, old photos of Louis Egan along with more info  on the criminals who built Bagnell Dam and Lake of the Ozarks.

Two posts elaborating on information we had in Damming the Osage are now posted on HYPERCOMMON.COM.

See the set up in Union Electric’s Louis Egan: “I’m having the finest time in the world”

But after hubris comes – The Fall of Union Electric’s Louis Egan

Feel free to poke around on HYPERCOMMON.COM, which, in addition to DAMs, includes musing on hillbillies (recent posts on the iconic outhouse), souvenirs (“The most hideous souvenir EVER?”), small towns (the Buffalos of Buffalo), tourism (yes, we are looking at Branson), and confessions – which will handle a multitude of (mostly esthetic) sins!

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Jan 282014
 

 

02-v2Before Truman’s dam waters rose, there was promise of new entrepreneurial opportunities to be had with the coming of a mammoth lake. We found these roadside offerings during paddlefish snagging season in the mid 1970s.

Since the dam closed, we have been amazed at the scarcity of tourist related imagery for Truman Dam and reservoir compared to the wealth of tchotchkes for Bagnell Dam and Lake of the Ozarks. There are hundreds of times more decals, spoon holders, compacts, plates, salt-and-pepper-shakers, tablecloths, pocket knives, matchbooks, postcards, brochures, etc. for the 1931 project

539To some extent this can be explained by the fact that we are, alas, no longer in the era of the souvenir spoon. It’s a well known fact that contemporary Americans are far more refined and sophisticated than their kitsch collecting grandparents – Right?

The sad truth is that Truman Dam and Lake have failed to develop into the promised and anticipated tourist mecca.  Even the dam itself is architecturally bland compared to the structure that creates Lake of the Ozarks. It lacks a singular identity, an iconic image, which are important components of success in the tourism industry.

We were sure at the time of the lawsuit, that the environmental damages would be unavoidable. Predictions of economic benefits to the area from tourism we suspected were exaggerated. As things have turned out,  the promised profitable tourist industry has been a disappointment (putting it mildly). A recent PhD thesis – “The Changing Landscape of a Rural Region: The Effect of the Harry S. Truman Dam and Reservoir in the Osage River basin of Missouri ” – by Melvin R. Johnson bears out our pessimistic appraisal and personal observations as we travel the area.

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Jan 152014
 

453Cast aluminum and painted license plate frame, circa 1940s

Lake of the Ozarks filled in 1931 but the Depression and World War II stymied its tourism development. From the late 1940s on, gift shops located along Highway 54 offered hundreds of kinds of objects to verify that you had indeed visited beautiful Lake of the Ozarks.  As the lake itself is all but unphotographable — like all reservoirs in existence, a parking lot for water — the favored icon was Bagnell Dam, which it must be conceded, is quite graphic.

By contrast, Truman Dam has all the charm of a gigantic farm pond, with a little center section of brutal concrete – boxy and utilitarian, impersonal, boring. Interestingly, we haven’t found anything like the number or variety of physical souvenirs of Truman to compare with the almost endless numbers of Bagnell Dam vacation memorabilia.

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