KSMU Sense of Place

A little ways to the east of the Springfield city limits, in a pastoral, wooded setting, is an old white church, which still holds services every Sunday. The current Mt. Pisgah United Methodist Church was built in 1888, just over two decades after the Civil War ended and 50 years after Springfield was incorporated. The church started as a Methodist Protestant Camp Ground around 1840 where circuit ministers would organize days and nights of non-stop preaching, according to church member Fred Hall. The site was part of the James and White River Circuit, located near the area where Jones Spring Flowed into Pierson Creek. Tents would sometimes be set up to shelter those who attended. "They would also use long branches from trees, which they called brush arbors, and those became protection from the sun and maybe a little shower. They'd use that for a roof," said Hall. "Seating would be underneath, and that's where the religious service would occur." The religious events were a chance for

In the days of segregation, African Americans had to refer to The Green Book to find places to safely stay overnight when they traveled. And a three-story, Victorian house in central Springfield was on the list. I’m standing on North Benton, just south of Chestnut Expressway between the Jordan Valley Community Health Center and the Springfield Municipal Court building on what was the site of Alberta’s Hotel. It’s just a parking lot now, but the history of this place extends way beyond the pavement. Alberta Northcutt Ellis opened her hotel the early 1950s to provide African Americans travelling along Route 66 a safe place to stay. It quickly became a hotspot for families and entertainers. Her grandson, Irv Logan, who lived and worked at the hotel for a time, remembers interacting with the guests. "That was the part that I enjoyed the most, y'know, because you never knew who was going to come. And I had the opportunity to meet people then as a youth that I had no idea who they were

He said his name was Omar Palmer, although he answered no questions about his past. It’s been said he arrived by train in Crane Missouri around 1929-1931, then made his way about 10 miles east through Stone County to the very small farm community of Oto, to establish the first of 3 medical clinics in the area. Within a few years after his arrival, Omar Palmer was treating 100, 150, and even 200 patients a day at his Oto Clinic, and he was treating them for free. “Locals called him the Wizard of Oto”, says Aurora Missouri teacher and historian Kim Mobley. “There’s lots of mystery and secrecy about where he came from, what his real name might have been, and what he might have done before he landed in the Ozarks” Mobley, a former newspaper editor, and author of the on-line home publication The Ozarkian Spirit says, “There were people who thought he was some kind of criminal running from the law. He did not like photos, and didn’t even like people to describe what he looked like. When

In the Ozarks, caves serve as geological landmarks and a testament to the region's Karst topography. But some caves in the region are woven into the legends and folklore passed from one generation to the next. One particular cave in the tiny village of Smallett, Missouri near Ava has been shrouded in mystery since the Civil War. Today, the cave is on a farm off of Highway A. The farm belongs to the Sellars family. Jerry Sellars, who owns the property with his wife, says stories about the cave have been passed down through his family. His relatives have lived on the property since the late 1800s. “In the early 1900s the cave would have been much larger because there’s a stream that runs right in front of the cave and over years some of the silt and everything has filled in and the opening is still there, you can still walk in, but it is smaller than it used to be,” Sellars said. The Smallett cave has been associated with mysterious sights and sounds, including floating lights. But it's

A woman’s alleged horseback ride through a small Ozarks boomtown in 1913 caught the attention of newspapers throughout the Midwest. The Atchison Daily Globe in Kansas was one of the many newspapers to publish the shocking story of a bizarre night gone wrong in Old Horton, Missouri. The small community was in a part of the Mark Twain National Forest in Howell County near Cabool. Here’s part of the newspaper’s account: A special dispatch from Old Horton, Mo., gives the details of the feud between factions of the Collins clan which lately broke out anew: It has developed here that a woman on horseback, devoid of clothing or even the fig leaf which Eve’s modesty required her to don, riding through the streets of this almost deserted village one night several weeks ago, was the cause of the recent outbreak of night riders who gave Mrs. Paralee Collins a severe whipping, and burned four houses, including the home of “Blind Jane” Keith or Mrs. James Keith. As the story goes, the woman,

As we continue our series “Mysteries of the Hollers,” we now travel to Roaring River State Park, where a so-called Mountain Maid once resided in a cabin tucked away in the woods. When people usually think of clairvoyants, they envision a woman at a carnival wearing a turban, staring ominously into a crystal ball. Jean Wallace, on the other hand was much more down to earth—though just as mysterious. “The concrete thing about her is that she lived here, and that’s pretty much the main thing we know 100% sure. And then you could also say her clairvoyance was probably a very known factor, considering how many people experienced that with her.” That’s Kaitlyn McConnell, founder of Ozarks Alive, a website dedicated to the preservation of local history and culture. In 2016, she wrote an extensive article covering what we know about the Mountain Maid. Jean Wallace was rumored to have magical powers to see the unseen. Wallace and her origins before coming to the Ozarks remain a mystery. We know

Near a winding, country highway, an old cemetery is nestled between a pasture of cattle and a corn field a few miles southeast of West Plains, Missouri. The Howell Valley Cemetery, originally known as the Langston Cemetery, dates back to shortly after the Civil War; several relatives of President George Washington are buried beneath these towering Oak trees. The volunteer caretaker shows up in a rusty, green truck and steps out to greet me. Around these parts, he’s known as Mike, or as “Dr. Moore,” a family doctor…but to me, he’s always been known as “Dad.” My dad is one in a long line of relatives who have served as trustees for this private cemetery. A stone wall surrounds the collection of graves. The wall was dedicated in 1926. And an inscription engraved into that stone wall at the front gate has long intrigued me. I ask my dad to read it aloud. It reads: “Howell Valley Cemetery: as a humble tribute to the memory of those friends and loved ones whose bodies lie buried here, this

About 20 years ago, historian Lou Wehmer bought a collection of old negatives from a longtime photographer in Willow Springs. The negatives were each four-by-five inches, from an antique, large format camera. And one negative in particular made Wehmer gasp. “It was a photograph of an older gentleman standing in front of a harp,” Wehmer said. The historian in Wehmer thought, “Hm. We didn’t have harpists in northern Howell County.” “We had fiddlers and we had guitar players. But I had never heard of a harpist. So that was a mystery to me,” Wehmer said. He filed that mystery away with his other archives for two decades…until he and another historian in Willow Springs were exchanging stories. “And he gave me a folder of newspaper articles. And as I was looking through them to see if anything would interest me, lo and behold, here was that same photograph that appeared in the Willow Springs Republican newspaper in the early 1930s,” Wehmer said. There was the man, poised and serious,

This is the story of a mysterious man, a pianist and music teacher by profession, who showed up in the small Northwest Arkansas town of Cincinnati in Washington County in the 1870s. He went by the name of Edwin Dolgoruki—sometimes reported as “G. Dolgoruki,” but usually as Edwin. But to this day no one is sure of who the man was, where he actually came from, or what was his real story. One of the first 20 th -century print references to Mr. Dolgoruki appeared in the “Ozark Moon” column, written anonymously by a correspondent calling himself “Uncle Walt,” in the September 17, 1938 edition of the Fayetteville Northwest Arkansas Times newspaper. Uncle Walt writes of a man who, and I quote, “was quite obviously a foreigner and his courtly manner, linguistic ability and musical talent stamped him as a man who had been of some importance in his native land.” Uncle Walt’s column suggests Dolgoruki simply showed up one day in the early 1870s in northwest Arkansas, and was befriended by a

Former Springfield News-Leader columnist Mike O’Brien wrote in May of 2001 that in 1946, a publishing house in Kansas put out a 32-page booklet called “True Stories of Peculiar People and Unusual Events in the Ozarks.” It was written by former Kansas City newspaper reporter William R. Draper. Among the topic included were: the guy in Arkansas who wanted to build an Egyptian-style pyramid, and the lady from Cassville who was once dubbed “The Witch of Roaring River.” But the story that caught Mike O’Brien’s eye was about a character known as “The Angel of Ava.” It told, said Mike O’Brien, “of mysterious mailings of money to residents in and around the Douglas County community” early in 1940. If you want an unsolved mystery, this is one of the best: a man or woman who positively impacted the lives of a handful of people for unknown reasons, who to this day has remained anonymous, with few if any clues pointing toward the person’s identity. Much like the story fascinated Mike O’Brien, the

Welcome back to our Sense of Community series, "Mysteries from the Hollers." Stories of buried treasure in the Ozarks have intrigued people for decades. Brooks Blevins, Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University, said the tales go all the way back at least to the first French explorers in the Greater Mississippi region and the eastern part of the Ozarks in the early 1700s, and they likely got most of their stories from Spanish legends before that. Those explorers, he said, came upon stories of silver mines. There are even reports, according to Blevins, that some of the lead samples they sent back to France were laced with silver. "Some of the early French explorers may even have been duped into believing that there was silver either by Native Americans in the area or by other Creole French just having fun at their expense," he said. And when the first detailed map of the middle part of North America was made, Blevins said there were silver and gold mines on it.

Eighty miles southeast of Springfield, deep in the Ozark Mountains lies a secluded getaway spot that draws people from all over the world. It boasts a river stocked with Rainbow Trout and a restaurant that makes one heck of a cobbler—but the town of Rockbridge, Missouri also has a gem of a past. What started in 1841 as a settlement of migrants from Kentucky is now a 2,000 acre resort that attracts visitors year round. Rockbridge Rainbow Trout and Game Ranch is home to some of the best fly fishing in the midwest. An iconic waterfall flows next to the mill into Spring Creek, not far from the Bryant Creek it meets up with. The water teems with trout, and a couple of anglers are doing their best to bring one in. James "Loren" Haden, who’s 85-years-old, grew up just down the road from Rockbridge, but didn't learn about it until later years. He says back in the mid-1900s in this wooded, hilly part of the rustic Ozarks, 10 miles was a long way to go. "But I knew of Rockbridge later on as a

Welcome to our Sense of Community series, "Mysteries from the Hollers." Before modern medicine was readily available, people would turn to home remedies to treat various diseases. When someone was bitten by an animal, especially if it was believed to be rabid, folks in the Ozarks as late as the 1930s, would pull out the family madstone or go to a local person who possessed one. Tina Marie Wilcox is the head gardener and herbalist at the Ozark Folk Center State Park ’s Heritage Herb Garden in Mountain View, Arkansas. “What a madstone actually is is a stony concretion from the digestive tract of a ruminant animal,” said Wilcox. In the U.S., madstones have originated mostly from deer. And those extracted from a white deer were thought to have special qualities. They got their name due to the fact that people believed they would prevent rabies if someone was bitten. “If you live way out in a log cabin in the woods, you know, and you’re bitten by an animal that you believe is rabid, you’re

George Washington Carver, famous for his many contributions to agriculture as a chemist at the Tuskegee Institute, was born into slavery sometime in the 1860s (no one knows for sure) on the farm of Moses Carver in Diamond, Missouri. From what historians can tell, Moses and his wife, Susan, were fond of little George who loved to help with domestic chores. He desperately wanted an education, but when he tried to attend a nearby school he was turned away because of the color of his skin. Kim Mailes, chairman of the Board of Directors for the Carver Birthplace Association , said Neosho had to establish a school for black children in 1872 because of a law passed by the Missouri Legislature following the Civil War, "saying that local schools who had sufficient numbers of African American children must establish an educational facility, so Neosho had enough." Four years after the Neosho Colored School opened, George Washington Carver, only 10 to 12-years-old, according to Mailes, walked

Smallin Civil War Cave near Ozark has a rich history, dating back to right after the last Ice Age. It was also a sacred space for the Osage tribes. But after the Osage moved to Kansas and Oklahoma, it became a community spot for pioneers and townfolk. Wanetta Bright, who owns the cave and surrounding property with her husband, took us back on a trip to see the cave through the eyes of local explorers. She says the explorer Henry Schoolcraft came to this place, describing it as a “secret of the great works of nature.” And while the name implies that the cave was used for strategic purposes during the Civil War, Bright says that has not been proven. “Honestly, we were not the ones who named it that. It was first called Smallin’s Cave. A family named Smallin came here in 1852, they were some of the first homesteaders” The locals also referred to the site as Smallin’s Cave. Bright says in the 1960s a man named Joseph Bolger bought the property and turned the area into a Civil War tourist

Smallin Civil War Cave outside of Ozark, Missouri, has more history to it than its name would suggest. KSMU’s Claire Kidwell went there to explore its ancient past—which includes a fascinating element surrounding the winter solstice. While hiking on the trail leading up to Smallin Civil War Cave, there’s a quiet atmosphere broken only by birdsong as you make your way to the cave. As you turn a corner, though, and see the mammoth, 10-story entrance for the first time, the sight of it knocks the breath out of your lungs. People throughout the ages have had the same reaction, put best into words by explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who wrote about the cave. “He said ‘We seem suddenly to be beholding some secret of the great works of nature, which had been hid from the foundations of the world.’” That’s Wanetta Bright, who owns the cave and surrounding property with her husband. While Schoolcraft was one of the first explorers to document the cave, he was far from the first to discover it.

Although much of the culture of native tribes has been lost in translation, scholars and archeologists have pieced together a retelling of the Midwest’s native people. They’ve done so though artifacts, journals and a sheer motivation to know more. Missouri may not seem like that big of a place, but William Meadows can list over ten historical tribes of Missouri with ease. Meadows is an anthropology professor at MSU. And he says the state has a rich record of Native American tribes. Some names? Osage, Quapaw, Caddo, Delaware and Kickapoo to name a few. He says two reservations were even within city limits of Springfield. “These are not like we think of with like concrete borders and things today. It’s like a crisscrossing. There’s people coming and going in a lot of ways. Clearly, the Osage were the dominate group that more or less controlled and occupied the biggest portion of Missouri," Meadows said. And it wasn’t unusual to find trade routes across the plains. Distances were long,

On a cold winter week in 1925, two babies were born in a hospital in West Plains, Missouri. They shared the same doctor and even the same first name. But one would grow up to stroll the red carpets of Hollywood, and the other would retire as a horse farmer in one of the most rural places in the Ozarks. On December 13 th , 1925, now-legendary actor and comedian Richard Wayne “Dick” Van Dyke was born to Hazel Victoria and Loren Wayne “Cookie” Van Dyke in the Christa Hogan Hospital in West Plains. Three days later, on December 16 th , Richard “Dick” Deupree was born in the same hospital. “We were the only two babies born that week in the hospital," Deupree said. The doctor at the time, Dr. Hogan, delivered both babies. Deupree says he remembers Dr. Hogan later recounting that week. Since they were the only babies born that week, their mothers became fast friends. “They corresponded back and forth. They met each other when they’d go in for a checkup, and they got acquainted. And they were

Tucked away off Highway 76 just north of the entrance to Silver Dollar City is an old one-room clapboard building. Next to it, a two-story house, which must have been quite grand in its day, sits abandoned. The roof of the porch has caved in, and ragged curtains hang at the windows. There’s also an old smokehouse on the property, a building that was constructed several years after the other structures and the remains of a trail ride that operated there in the 1980s and 1990s. The older buildings, on the National Register of Historic Places, were once the home and business of Levi Morrill. It was here that Morrill and his wife, Jennie, after moving from their home in Lamar to the southern Missouri Ozarks, established the Notch Post Office in 1895. They operated it out of their home and later in the small, one room structure, which also served as a grocery store, that Morrill built next door. Morrill was made famous in the 1907 novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, by Harold Bell Wright in

A tiny town in south-central Missouri was once a refuge for bank robbers and outlaws. 92-year-old Dick Deupree remembers when Dora had its fair share of bandits. Dick Deupree recalls how, when he was a child, his father worked in the general store in Dora as the assistant postmaster. While life may have seemed normal in the shop front, there was a lot of drama in the background as his father dealt with notorious bank robbers. Deupree remembers one night he was leaving the store with his father when a car drove up and two men got out, brandishing pistols. His father grabbed the only thing he could find for protection. “When we went out the store door, he had a crate there, a banana crate, with wooden wagon wheel spokes. So he reached down and got one of those.” However, the two were lucky that night. One of the bank robbers in town at the time was Lando Gunter, a fugitive who took refuge in Dora with the Deupree's after he robbed a bank in Richland. The Deupree's were friends with the