H I S T O R Y O F H E R E

by JAMES F. BARRETT

The Wilderness Road and it’s Kin,

Where Ozark Commerce and Travel Began!

Part II

We always seem to think of Ozarks roads as being "high-roads," running along the ridges to seek level routes and avoid creek beds. In most cases, the main ones now are indeed high-roads. However, a careful examination of older maps, such as the 1907 Forsyth USGS Survey map, show many little unpaved, unimproved paths running through the semi-flat areas along hundreds of stream beds as well as up and down the gullies leading to them. In the early days it may have seemed easier to drive one’s wagon up a creek than to wind through the dense forests which, in those pre-tie-hacking days, covered the ridges of the hills. Thus it was with the Springfield-Harrison Road north of the White River.

Also, it is an interesting fact that wagon masters frequently drove their wagons through creeks or ponds, letting them stand in the water for awhile, to swell the drying and shrinking wood to keep the hand made wooden wheels tight and solid. We are told by such old-time authorities as Jack Turner, of Reeds Spring, that his grandfather, a freighter on the Wilderness Road, often stopped his wagons directly in the deeper part of Ghost Pond (or Deadman’s Pond, now Morrill’s Pond) to let his wheels "tighten up." Turner’s father owned a general store at Radical (now Kimberling City) for many years. He freighted his goods down from Springfield commercial sources and from the railroad yards there. The trip always took several bone-jarring days. Jack’s grandmother often told him tales of the trip.  

During the summer, older school children in both Arkansas and Missouri were employed to drive the farmers’ herds of cattle, horses and mules north to the railroad in Springfield. They carried six foot long cudgels to guide their charges and drive them back to the Wilderness Road when they strayed into the surrounding deep woods. Usually traveling with the trains of freight wagons for added safety, the youngsters camped each night along the way, taking turns to guard their charges from marauding mountain lions and Bushwhackers, the very dangerous and unprincipled vandals left over from the Civil War.  

The many large commercial turkey flocks were given special consideration before being driven northward. They were first herded through pools of tar poured out on the hard ground, then directly through a layer of dry sand. Thus they acquired durable tar and sand "boots" to withstand more than a week’s trip over the sharp broken flint rock of the Wilderness Road. For no speculator/buyer at the railhead would buy birds with torn and bloody feet. They would not survive the long rail trip to market in St. Louis or back East.  

A lady in Nixa tells us that her parents drove their parents’ hogs to market in Springfield, at the stock yards near the new railroad. They drove them up the Wilderness Road, then all the way across Springfield on Campbell to the rail yards. She says that her mother told her how hogs were always contrary, mean, and quite often raced off into the woods in search of acorns and freedom from the pesky children driving them. It took a long time to find them, round them up and get them on the Wilderness Road path again. So, using Ozarks ingenuity, they shut off the hogs’ wandering vision by using a turkey needle and heavy black thread to sew the hogs’ eyelids shut. Thus, the sight restricted hogs could be driven to Springfield quite nicely. Once in the stockyards, they clipped the threads and turned the hogs over to the buyers.  

Another old-time native, Birchy White, of Kimberling City, recalls that as a young boy his mother would call him out to move the family’s cattle aside when wagon trains with driven herds of Arkansas cattle were known to be approaching. No one wanted to have their strays accidentally joining someone else’s commercial herd heading for Springfield. Birchy recalls watching his charges with great care when the Wilderness Road herds went by, for they were a major part of the family’s wealth and winter sustenance.

Before the Maybry (Mayberry) Ferry was built across the dangerous White River at Radical, which is now Kimberling City, the high waters and floods which commonly rampaged on that river would stop all traffic. The word would be passed up and down the Roads, "Halt the wagons and camp, the White’s up and impassable!" Then Linchpin (now Branson West), and other favorite traveler’s campgrounds such as Radical, Tauria and Dutch Store, would be thronged with hundreds of freight wagons, itinerant preachers, drummers and many ordinary travelers on foot and on horse.

At the camps on the south side of the White would be large herds of livestock, turkeys, wagon loads of eggs and vegetables, loads of lumber, cotton bales and sacks of harvested grain. All of the freighters and travelers would camp, exchange lively banter, gamble with cards and dice, drink the area’s moonshine, or just sleep and grouse until the high waters of the White subsided and commerce could resume once more. Old settlers tell of encampments of a hundred wagons on both sides of the White when it was high, flooded or in rampage, as it so often was.

The Maybry (Mayberry) Ferry, the Boston Ferry and the Hensley Ferry, all crossing the White, changed much of that, allowing commerce and travelers to cross in all but the wildest of the river’s times. Later, W. W. Kimberling bought the Maybry Ferry, completely rebuilt it, and it served as the Kimberling Ferry for many, many years until the construction of the first bridge over the White River at Radical, on the White’s banks, just south of what is now Kimberling City.

That first bridge across the White, further up river than Taneycomo, was built in late 1922, at Radical, once again changing the route of the Wilderness Road, which had to be moved somewhat to fit the "approaches" to the new steel bridge. On December the 10th, 1922, the Kimberling Ferry made its last trip across the White River. Quoting the Crane Chronicle of that year, "Last Sunday the Kimberling Ferry on White River just below the mouth of the James River quit business. The old boat was hauled onto the banks of the river and its belly turned up to the sun, there to have its bones bleached by the elements and time."

On any day, when the commerce of the late 1800’s was in high gear, one could see a hundred freight wagons going past any point on the Wilderness Road, moving north and south. The same was the case on the Boston (Ridge Road) Branch and the southern part of the Springfield-Harrison Road below the White, served by the Boston Branch. Drummers, whom we now call salesmen, rode with the trains, hawking their wares and taking orders anywhere they could gather a few people to hear their pitch. Ministers and preachers also traveled with the trains. They set up brush arbors to hold revivals, ministered to little gatherings of the faithful along the Roads and performed marriages for couples who had often lived together for many months awaiting the arrival of a preacher to perform the holy bonds, for there were very few settlements and even fewer churches along the Wilderness Road and its brethren Roads in those primitive days.

Since there were also no doctors in the wilderness, the ministers usually carried bags of liniments, medicines and nostrums. These holy men not only ministered to folks’ souls, they cared for their physical ills and wounds as well. They were truly the "Balm in Gilled," which the Ozarks needed during that pioneering age. An early, if not the first, minister of Springfield’s St. Paul’s Church on Walnut Street, was just such a man. He was called a "circuit-rider" minister, riding the circuit of parishioner gatherings, quite often using the Wilderness Road and its brethren routes. The church still has and treasures his original physician’s old black handbag and medical contents.

In time, at every place where a well used game or Indian trail crossed the Roads, some form of settlement would begin. At first just lean-tos, tents and other temporary shelters, where families would await the arrival of the wagon trains. They were there to sell their farm goods, to talk to the minister, or to trade for precious manufactured items being brought southward from the new railhead in Springfield. Clocks, pans, dish ware, sugar, salt, cloth, boots, nails, tin, tools, firearms, lamps and all manner of civilization’s trappings were eagerly sought and bartered for with trade goods. There was precious little hard cash on the Western Frontier of Missouri and Arkansas in those early days.

In time these temporary shelters grew more permanent. Log cabins were built, then little stores sprang up to hold the goods and begin a system of fixed commerce, in trade and eventually in cash. Around these grew small towns, Riverdale, Nixa, Dutch Store (Highlandville), Spokane, Tauria (often called "Tarty" by the residents), Stutts (Stultz) (Reeds Spring Junction), Irma, Thelma, Radical (Kimberling City), Blue Eye, Lampe, Oak Grove, Urbanette, Kirbyville, Omaha, Burlington, Ridgeway, Bear Creek Springs and many other little hamlets and towns in Missouri and Arkansas. Spurs of these Roads served the growing towns of Branson and Hollister. Forsyth was served by the Ozark Mail Trace which joined the Springfield-Harrison Road at Kirbyville.

Commerce connected to Forsyth because it was the highest point on the White where steam paddle boats could travel and regularly come to dock. Here more active trading and bartering took place every time a boat arrived or loaded, prepared to depart for the long trip down to the Mississippi, then on to St. Louis or down to New Orleans. Some of the common items hauled away by the steam boats were bear fat, cotton bales, honey and the rapidly diminishing supply of furs and hides, bound up and compressed into heavy shipping bales. Twice, shallow draft paddle boats battled their way up the White to the mouth of the James. But the hard work, the constant manual poling-off labor and the constant risk of sinking on the shoals or being permanently grounded on gravel bars was far too great for the meager rewards. The two trips were made mostly to best a challenge and prove a point of steam-boat pride.

As the little collections of cabins and stores began to grow, people soon began flocking to these settlements along the Wilderness Road, its brethren Roads and the main spurs, for here they could find work, a place to sell their skills and goods, enjoy the small joys and companionship of their peers, and perhaps most importantly, find safety from the wild beasts and the even wilder Bushwhackers of the deep woods. These tiny, tentative settlements prospered and grew rapidly.

Around 1906, railroads were built into Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri. The famed White River Branch of the Missouri Pacific drove up Turkey Creek to Hollister and crossed the White River at Branson. Then, as the Iron Mountain and Southern Railway, it wound up Roark Creek, through one of the first tunnels in the Midwest at Reeds Spring, and on toward the lead and zink mines at Carthage and Joplin. The railroads saw a great future in this part of the Ozarks, freighting lumber, minerals, fruit, livestock and grain out and bringing in manufactured goods for the growing settlements and businesses.

Speedy trains came which could haul vast loads of heavy freight and passengers. Penned-in cars of livestock began to take over the commercial tasks born by the Wilderness Road and its brethren roads for over half a century. But the old ways die hard. Generations of wagonmasters passed their equipment and trade to their sons, for much of the Ozarks and communities along the three roads were still not served by the new railroads. So, freight and travelers still walked and rode the Wilderness Road and its fellow Roads for many years after the "iron horses" came to the Ozarks.

In time, much of the old Wilderness Road and its brethren Roads became the logical routes and the foundations for graded and improved roadways. Roadways which then became graveled, then surfaced as the years and decades passed. As the Wilderness Road and the other historic Roads slowly disappeared beneath the paved roads and highways of today, the towns along the routes and down the spurs continued to grow and prosper.

Today, with wide and paved roads and highways in place, commercial freight travels in sixteen wheelers. Now, private cars, passengers, trucks and busses, as well as nearly seven million tourists a year, pass along the grand scenic routes of the old Wilderness Road, the Boston (Ridge Road) Branch and the Springfield-Harrison Road. The trip from Berryville or Harrison to Springfield takes less than two hours, instead of more than a week, as it did in the late 1800’s. The Reign of Terror, with its vengeful Radical Party, its vicious Bushwhackers and its vigilante Bald Knobbers is a thing of the past. Most of the old Wilderness Road and the other Roads are covered over by many miles of smooth traveling concrete and asphalt. The three visionaries, Joe Philibert, W. W. Kimberling and William Boston are also gone, but their commercial dream lives on.

Now, 150 years later, those routes for commerce and travel are very much alive and well. Highways 13, 160, 248 and parts of 65 in Missouri, and Highways 221, 62 and 65 in Arkansas are today’s Wilderness Road, Boston (Ridge Road) Branch and the Springfield-Harrison Road. Curiously enough, the rolling freight and passengers on the Wilderness Road and its brethren Roads has finally outlived the once mighty and bustling railroads of the area. For the railroads which threatened to end the Wilderness Road and its kin now haul practically no freight at all and have become mostly fine tourist attractions.

Whereas, the routes of the Wilderness Road and the rest of those three historic routes are still serving our Ozarks with today’s commerce. The old roads of the Ozarks are now ghosts beneath the paved highways which have covered them over. But their deeply rutted ways, their pioneering spirit and the commerce and people that travel them still are - YES - very much ALIVE and WELL!

JAMES F. (JIM) BARRETT

(Copyright 1995/96/97/98/99/2000/2001)

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