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• HOME • GENERAL STORE • NATURAL HERITAGE • HISTORY, CULTURE & CRAFTSMANSHIP |
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History, Culture & Craftsmanship
• History |
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| History Index • Into The Hills • Upper South • Native America • The Irish • The Germans • Civil War • Baldknobbers • Railroads • Ozark Bridges • Historic Roads • Cemeteries Culture Index • Agriculture • Book Learning • Cooking • Craftsmanship • Faith in the Hills • History • Music • People of the Hills • Storytelling • Tourism |
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The Ozarks have always been a crossroads.
These hills were the home of the Caddo and the Osage.
The Ozarks became a place of legend when Spanish conquistedors came to the hills. Stories of buried silver mines, lost loves, and secret caves hidden in the pines and oak, came and passed into history.
As the Great American West opened up to settlers, the Ozarks again became a crossroads. The Old Wilderness Road became the Old Wire Road (as the new-fangled telegraph was strung between Missouri and Arkansas). The Butterfield Stage began making regular stops.
These hills, with a geography stretched among the piney woods of Texas, the great plains of Kansas, and the Midwestern industry of St. Louis, were a crossroads of Western expansion.
The War Between The States brought suffering, deprivation, destruction. It brought death.
After the war, the Ozarks were a no-man's land were Bushwhackers — and later Baldknobbers — routinely murdered those in their way. The hills were no longer a crossroads, but a place of danger and desolation.
Law and safety slowly returned to the Ozarks, brought about in part by the influence of preachers and the establishment of churches. In time, the Ozarks became known as a place of craftsmanship, music, and old-fashioned values.
But don't forget. Don't forget there's a rich, and sometimes very bloody history, right under your nose. Don't forget the Ozarks are a crossroads of legend and history. Don't forget there's backbone and faith here to sustain through good times and through bad. And don't forget the talent, the patience and the faith that made these hills a place worth visiting today.
A family-friendly Las Vegas? A Midwestern vacation destination?
Hardly. Don't insult the heart and soul of what made these hills. And don't lose the very thing that draws others to them.
— Joshua Heston, editor
November 3, 2008
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In memory of that beautiful summer in the Ozark Hills, when, so often, we followed the old trail around the rim of Mutton Hollow — the trail that is nobody knows how old — and from Sammy's Lookout watched the day go over the western ridges. — Harold Bell Wright, 1907
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Missouri stood with back to the Mississippi and face to the plains — the Missouri River formed a highway to the Rocky Mountains and beyond. By mid-nineteenth century, American enterprise stood prepared to leap across the prairies with Missouri as base of operations and gateway for the conquest of the West.
— excerpted from the Missouri State Museum, Jefferson City, Missouri.