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From The
President of
The Wilderness Road Of The
Ozarks
James F. (Jim)
Barrett
A DAY OF
SADNESS ON THE WILDERNESS
ROAD
The
President's Message this issue of the Message Tree
is more than a bit sad in places, but it must be
told and considered. I try to be upbeat when I
write my message each month, and so I'll try to
remain so in this Message, though I am very sad at
heart.
Slane Chapel, Ray's Market, the Maybry Ferry, the
First Kimberling Bridge, Grandma Pat's Shanty,
Woody's Old Store, and on and on and on. It's so
sad that all of these most interesting, nostalgic
and often historic places have had to be engulfed,
abandoned or obliterated to make way for newer and
"better" things. Some stood the storms and
faithfully served their community for half a
century, some for much more time. But perhaps the
saddest event currently, and the most distressing,
is the loss of the old landmark Nickerson Cabin,
which stood alongside the Wilderness Road for over
150 years. It was, by far, the oldest
still-standing-intact home or building in the
Central Ozarks. Until a few days ago it stood in
the parking lot of the old Kimberling Hills Country
Club and Golf Pro Office Building.
The
clubhouse passed from hand to hand lately, serving
as many things, ending up in the possession of a
local lawyer, who decided to turn it into office
space for more profit and usefulness. I assume that
one day we will find out the thinking behind the
destruction and removal of the old landmark
Nickerson Cabin, but for now it appears it was
destroyed to make room for a few more cars to park
in the lot. Now I WILL admit, it wasn't actually
dozed out, piled up and burned, as usually happens
to old structures. Much of it was taken apart and
hauled off. But to what destination and to what
purpose is, as yet, an unknown. I hope one day to
be granted an interview and to be told the thinking
behind this sadness, and what the fate of the dear
old cabin became.
No
one seems to know which of the Nickerson brothers
actually built the cabin, but we do know that the
Nickerson family occupied the little rustic home
for many years there beside the very busy
Wilderness Road. In the waning years of the
Kimberling Country Club's actual membership use,
the ladies of Kimberling Hills used the Nickerson
cabin extensively. I believe it might have been the
art classes, but we'll have to find that out for
certain one day. In any event, the ladies kept the
place clean and well maintained, paying craftsmen
to keep the old hand split shingle roof repaired
and the exterior chinked, clean and attractive. The
cabin was never allowed to become any sort of
eyesore.
My
dear old friend, Cecil Johnson, of Johnson Hill
fame, once told me that his wife lived in the cabin
as a young lady. He said that he would ride down
there on horseback on a Saturday evening and pick
her up. She would ride with him across the White
River on the Kimberling Ferry, to go dancing in
Lampe at someone's barn dances held there on many a
summer's weekend night. He said he would drop her
off at her home, the old Nickerson Cabin, before
first daylight Sunday morning, in order that she
could join her family for devotions that day. I'll
also have to find out what her maiden family name
was. Isn't it sad how this vital, historic
information escapes one? How it doesn't seem so
really important until a dramatic loss occurs, like
the destruction of the landmark home cabin - or the
death of a marvelous old native or pioneer figure.
Now I wish that I had all of this information,
these details, these names, dates and times at my
memory's beck and call - but I don't - only a
smattering of information on the Nickerson
Cabin.
I'll
report to you dear reader friends when I find out
why the cabin was taken down and where its dear old
carcass ended up. Why didn't historic
preservationists protect it, you shout, waving your
fist in the air? Because we historic
preservationists took the old place for granted. We
didn't bother to see that it was put on the
Register of Historic Places, which would have
protected and cared for it into the future. No, we
just loved seeing it there, knew it had always been
there and assumed it always would be there. Too
bad, folks, but now it's gone.
Suppose you would like to know about the other
historic places I mentioned at the start of this
article. Well, let me see: Slane Chapel is still in
existence, but abandoned to its original use, added
onto and no longer recognized and memorialized by
any appropriate sign or plaque. It's become a
community center, of sorts, away on down on DD
Highway at one of the major road junctions there.
It's historical significance is fading away. Soon
no one will remember what it was or why it's still
kept there at the junction - if is so
remains.
Ray's
Market stood at the corner of DD and 13 Highway for
nearly 50 years. It was the first "super center" in
the Mid Ozarks, in the Table Rock area. Most of us
older residents well remember telling folks to
"meet me at Ray's Market, about seven tomorrow
morning," or some such time. Ray's was a
universally recognized place to meet, grab a roll,
get hot coffee, gas up the truck and head out to
work or to a day fishing on the lake with friends.
Now the old market has been taken down and replaced
by a very fine and almost elegant office building.
Someday, perhaps, that lovely new building will
become a historically recognized place. But you'll
not be able to fondly recall coffeeing and gassing
up there while waiting for your work buddies or
fishing friends to join you. I also wonder if the
new owners will put up a "Ray's Market" plaque,
telling folks about the locally historic landmark,
and that the old slab, foundation and spirit of
Ray's still exists just below the lobby area's fine
new floor finish.
The
Maybry Ferry existed just upstream on the White
River, several hundred yards west of the present
Kimberling Bridge. It served the local traffic,
hunters, farmers and travelers on the game and
Indian trails, which became the Wilderness Road in
later years. It was old and falling into disrepair
when the Kimberling family came along and bought it
in the late 1800's. Then they sent for fancy
special timbers and materials to construct a new
Kimberling Ferry on that same spot. Held in place
by a very heavy overhead cable stretching from
shore to shore, it was propelled by the force of
the flowing White River. Setting the angle of the
ferry relative to the current caused it to be
driven back and forth across the waters as traffic
and needs demanded. The Kimberling family joined
with Joe Philibert and returning Civil War veterans
to build the Wilderness Road, joining the farmlands
of Harrison, Berryville and SW Missouri to the new
railroad yard in North Springfield. It ferried
animals, folks, teams and wagons across the White
for nearly fifty years.
In
1928, the Kimberling Ferry was turned up on the
south bank and left to rot, replaced by the new
steel Kimberling Bridge. Folks lined both railings
of the new bridge on weekend evenings to fish the
White running below. In those days, traffic was so
light and casual it could drive slowly down the
middle, respecting the good folk leaning against
the rails, with their kids, fishing and
chatting.
The
terrible White River washed away a part of it some
years later, cutting off a great deal of NW
Arkansas and SW Missouri from the rest of the Mid
Ozarks for a number of months until it was
repaired. When the Corps of Engineers began
building Table Rock Dam, MoDot began building the
new Kimberling Bridge, some 200 feet above the bed
of the White River below. The old Kimberling Bridge
remained to serve traffic, a couple of hundred
yards upstream and over a hundred feet below the
massive new bridge.
The
Corps let out the old bridge to salvage. An officer
of the Stone County Bank tells me that his father
was the original contractor. He tells me that his
dad salvaged all that he desired and then sold the
contract to another salver. It seems that the
second man was partying up in Springfield when a
flash flood came down the White, backed up behind
the uncompleted new dam and buried the old bridge
completely. (I have an old picture of it
disappearing). Now the bridge lies, ghostlike and
nearly forgotten, a hundred feet or more beneath
the surface of Table Rock Lake.
Grandma
Pat's Shanty? Well, that takes a bit of
explanation. It seems that my parents, over forty
years ago, retired from Kansas City and came to
Table Rock Lake to build their new home. L. O.
Majors, a real estate person of the day, and a
former cheese factory operator from Reeds Spring,
sold them a piece of property down on Joe Bald
Road. It was the old Hatcher farm homestead. In
those days Joe Bald Road was a one-lane, dirt and
flint-rock path running along the ridges and among
the trees. It left old 13 Highway not far south of
OO Highway and the Sportsmen's One Stop. It is hard
to imagine now, but I tell you the truth here, my
folks' new place, which they called Santa Fe Bend,
was the first place on Joe Bald Road from which you
could actually see Table Rock Lake - honest! The
woods, hillocks and brush were that
dense.
Someday
I'll get around to telling you the whole good-fun
story, but suffice it now to say that I brought a
16 x 16 foot one-room building down from Kansas
City, in prefab pieces, and put it together there
one day for my folks. It was their work place, well
house and storage while they built their home. It's
also where I camped-out many and many a day and
night in the years while I helped them get laid out
and housed. After the home was built, Grandma Pat
appropriated the little building for her hobby
house. Dad built onto it a bit and it became,
"Grandma Pat's Shanty." Later it became quite a
large and well-recognized antique shop, Grandma
Pat's Antiques, for many years. The original
building is still there, unrecognized, now just the
ground-floor, SW corner room in a large apartment
building.
Woody's
Old Store? Well, dear reader friends, a lot of
natives and old residents will recall Woody Aker's
little store and primitive gas station that stood
on the NE corner of the junction of Highways 13 and
76 for many and many a year. It and one little
white frame house was all that marked this junction
when the two primitive highways were barely 2 lanes
wide, going humpity-bumpity through the Ozark
Hills. Then came Table Rock Lake, causing Howard
Claybough to move his businesses from Reeds Spring
up to this highway junction, much closer to "what's
happening." Woody's little old station disappeared,
to be replaced by the first Claybough Plaza,
containing Howard's sparkling new Chevy agency and
the equally new and beautiful Bank of Table Rock
Lake, along with many other new
businesses.
So,
folks, that's the stories, at least in part, of
several old landmarks, now gone or engulfed by time
and construction. But the valuable old, historic
Nickerson Cabin...? Well, we'll long lament its
passing, and maybe one day I'll be able to tell you
the why's and wherefores of this tragic and
depressing event. I'll see you reader friends in a
couple of weeks right here in our beloved old
Gazette newspaper for some more of "The History of
Here."
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