Jul 172016
 

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Webster bluff – Hahatonka
Jas. Bruin. Linn Creek. Mo. Unsent.

The caption on this vintage image seems to indicate that at one time Webster Bluff may have been part of  large holdings of the Snyder family, known as Ha Ha Tonka. A Karst masterpiece of the Ozarks, Ha Ha Tonka – a more dramatic complex of collapsed cave, sinkholes, cliffs than any similar area – fascinated not only wealthy Kansas Citians like the Snyders, whose estate encompassed 5,400 acres but local people as well. And it still does. Ha Ha Tonka is an extremely well-attended state park today, southwest of Camdenton.

This idyllic scene could be recreated today. Google “Webster Bluff”  and you’ll find it’s located in northeast Dallas County in the Lead Mine Conservation Area, which lies about halfway between Camdenton and Buffalo.  You can fish, float, hike and commune with nature at Webster Bluff still.  More than two miles of the Niangua River flow through the almost 8,000 acres of Lead Mine as well as 3.5 miles of Jakes Creek. The Missouri Department of Conservation identifies its highlights:

This forested area contains savanna, glades, and old fields. Facilities and features include boat ramps, an unmanned firearms range, fishable ponds, several intermittent streams, and two permanent streams (Niangua River, Jakes Creek). . . . Lead Mine Conservation Area contains many excellent examples of dolomite glade communities, oak-hickory uplands, and clear running springs.

One of those springs is named Webster as well.

May 312016
 

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Real photo postcard. Written in red ink, “Hotel Ha Ha tonk a MO”. Published by Jas. Bruin Linn Creek, MO. Unsent.

There’s a long and largely unsuccessful history of trying to develop Ha Ha Tonka as a tourist attraction. We’re not sure exactly where this frame hotel was located or who operated it. After Robert Snyder Sr. was killed in a 1906 automobile accident in Kansas City, his sons struggled to justify finishing the castle, which burned in 1942. Look closely at the car … this is an early one! Does anyone have more information on this hostelry? We’d love to hear it.

 

May 132016
 

Entitled “Trout Glen” and written in red ink “Ha ha ton ka,”  this real photo postcard was published by Jas. Bruin, Linn Creek, MO. Unsent.

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Before Bagnell Dam, this spring outlet fed into the Niangua River. Springs throughout the Ozarks were stocked with several varieties of trout beginning in the late 1800s. Trout and even salmon were also dumped into streams that were too warm for their survival. Rainbows from the McCloud River in California proved to be the hardiest. In very few of these environments will they reproduce.

Robert McClure Snyder put in a small dam and a mill on this spring branch, creating a cool pool for trout. The pond was swamped by the warm muddy waters of the Osage as it backed up and spread out when Bagnell Dam closed. The loss of the trout pond was one justification for the Snyder family’s lawsuit against Union Electric.

The millstone is embedded in the concrete today as a decorative element along the path.

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Apr 132016
 

sc422Natural Bridge Ha Ha Tonka. Real photo postcard, Published by Jas. Bruin, Linn Creek, MO. Unsent.

Missouri has a lot of natural bridges. One of the largest is at Ha Ha Tonka Statte Park, spanning 60 feet and reaching more than 100 feet into the air. The tunnel through it is 70 feet long. It’s not only one of the larger ones in Missouri, it’s definitely the first one pictured. A crude woodcut of this arch appeared in The First and Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Missouri, G. C. Swallow, 1855.

The Natural Bridge is a showcase feature of the Ha Ha Tonka Karst Natural Area in the Missouri State Park acreage surrounding  Robert M. Snyder’s once-palatial country estate.  The park webpage notes: “All of these wonders (the karst features in Ha Ha Tonka park) are the result of the collapse of underground caverns in ancient geological times.”

For a sense of scale, note the four people on the slope above the arch.

 

Mar 092016
 

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Real photo postcard published by Jas. Bruin Linn Creek, Mo. This card was never mailed but has a penciled message on the back from Georgia Heaton to Merton Heaton: “This is your little Fluzzy in the hack for a ride. The mules & hack belong to J Bruin the photographer. The one on the left mule yst (sic – used) to be our’s but we sold it to Bruin quite a while. This is by the yard gate.”