History
One hundred years ago, the actions of a private company could have changed the face of our part of the Ozarks. Following large-scale timber harvesting made possible by the railroad's arrival in Howell County in 1882, additional rail lines were added to get to more trees. For another decade, the...
For several decades I've been in the habit of noting and attempting to preserve the earliest accounts of settlement in our county. I recently ran across a short letter written to the West Plains Journal in February 1899 by James A. King. Entitled "From an Old Settler," the writer recalled, "My...
Author Thomas Wolfe claimed you can’t go home again, and singer-songwriter Steve Earle crooning “Hometown Blues” wishes he had never returned home, because none of his old friends hung around there anymore. Well, that wasn’t my experience retuning to Willow Springs on Memorial Weekend for the...
On a trip to Van Buren last week, I noticed some parts of the old Current River Railway trackbed still visible from the highway, starting at Willow Springs. I often walk the old bed east of Willow Springs and admire the rockwork and pilings used to build trestles to cross the Eleven Point River....
Part 1 focused on the conflict that existed in the Missouri Senate in 1973 stemming from provisions of the Missouri Constitution. On one hand, the Constitution provided that the lieutenant governor was the presiding officer of the senate, but on the other, granted the senate rule-making authority...
“Fulltime” Phelps and the Missouri Senate Showdown- Part 1
One of the more interesting jobs I’ve ever had, and certainly one of the most educational, was working for the Missouri Senate in 1973, as the reading clerk. That year, the upper house of the Missouri General Assembly provided political...
In our previous two articles, I recounted several occasions where criminal suspects exchanged gunfire with the Massie-Graham duo and lost. Another incident involving the two Willow Springs troopers occurred in June 1935. A trio of bandits charged with robbing a nightclub in Poplar Bluff and the...
Trooper Nathan Massie retained the distinction of being the first and only Missouri State Highway Patrolman in Howell County for a little less than a year. In October 1932, Trooper Ed C. Brown, a graduate of the second Patrol class, was assigned to help Nathan Massie in Willow Springs. Though...
Last April this column featured former Birch Tree and Liberty teacher Bob Shepherd in an article titled "Montier's Favorite Actor." And by now you probably recognize Bob as the "Hearing Aid Guy" from the TV commercial, but I recently learned that a movie he co-produced and stars in, Past Shadows...
This week marks the ninetieth anniversary of the creation of an organization I worked for over a third of its existence. Before I retired, on the occasion of the organization's sixtieth birthday, I wrote a history of the Missouri State Highway Patrol's Troop G, telling of its impact locally. This...