June 2019 Preview

Have a story or photo you’d like to share?

Connect with the River Hills Traveler at

(417) 451-3798 or email jimmy@ riverhillstraveler.com or text (417) 451-3798

VOL. 47, NO. 1

JUNE 2019

www.riverhillstraveler.com

New website promotes tourism in the Ozark foothills

By MATTIE LINK

T

mattie@riverhillstraveler.com _____________

he Poplar Bluff Chamber of Commerce, partnering with the City of Poplar Bluff and the Missouri Division of Tourism, has launched a new regional tourism project, “See The Ozarks.”

Seetheozarks.com is a tourism information website for outdoors enthusiasts traveling around Southeastern Missouri’s rivers, lakes, springs, and forests.

“The website was built to be a com-

Small waters, big fun!

I

took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

For just over a century, these words have been an invitation to get off the beaten path in our journey through life.

An inspiration to seek the more-wild of nature; the less urbane in where we traverse.

These past few Rick Mansfield weeks I have done ———— just that. Taken Reflections guidance from from the Road Robert Frost’s iconic poem and sought the “road not taken.”

The thoroughfares I was seeking were of water. Clear, spring-fed Ozark streams abundant with life and opportunity. Devoid of fellow companions.

In that lay the challenge.

I ventured into northern Shannon Please see WATERS, 15

prehensive travel resource for visitors that focuses on the many beautiful natural points of interest in the Ozark foothills,” said Steve Halter, Poplar Bluff Chamber of Commerce president.

“At the Chamber, we have always been in the tourism business and in the last five years we have really upped our game in that.”

The Chamber applied to the Missouri Division of Tourism (MDT) and Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) certificates, to make all their tourism work official and get some additional

funding for that.

“Last year we found out that we could do three counties, so in addition to ours we applied for Carter County and Wayne County,” said Halter.

The Chamber was granted that and now is acting on their behalf as well as their own as the Ozark foothills region.

“When we met with them they loved the idea and we have applied for grantmatch funding for Wayne, Carter, and Butler counties, that we are fairly confident we will be receiving,” said Halter.

Please see SETO, 14

Take time for the Bourbeuse

T

By Michelle Turner he Bourbeuse River may have gotten its name from the French word for muddy, but that certainly doesn’t stop floaters and anglers from enjoying this 154-mile river that makes its crooked path through five counties until it meets the Meramec in Franklin County near Moselle, just south of Union.

Leigh Kolb, an instructor at East Central College in Union, has been exploring the Bourbeuse for the past 14 years.

“The water isn’t cold and clear like many of Missouri’s spring-fed floating rivers, but because it isn’t overcrowded by tourists, you feel a sense of being one with untouched nature,” Kolb said.

Please see CALM, 14

Page 2 • June 2019

What it takes to get a ‘lesser-known float streams’ story W hen asked about occupation, I no longer say that I’m retired. I am too busy to claim that distinction.

So, sometimes I tell people “I’m a freelance writer.” Just one of many obligators of my time.

Now for those not sure of that vocation, I will relate my most recent endeavors.

By the time this is published, I will have completed my most recent assignment.

Assignments, I should say. For I have been toiling at submissions for two separate periodicals.

The first, just a “few notes and pictures” for a piece that will hopefully drive some tourist business to our area. Rick Mansfield ———— Told about a parReflections ticularly great view from the Road from a local bluff, I timed things just right to walk briskly up a steep hill (amazing how quickly one gets out of shape) and arrived as the sun began to set.

Took multiple shots with three different cameras. Best results were from my iPhone. Who would have thought? I wish to give credit where it is due.

I do not mind not always getting picture credit myself. But as this camera was assembled by workers that frequently jump from the edge of their floor to “quit” their occupation, often enough that Apple has installed “safety nets” to save lives and workers; I wish the phone device to be acknowledged.

Probably little of my stuff will even be used.

The next assignment is for friends that publish an outdoor magazine monthly. I was to go in search of “lesser-known float streams.”

What readers will enjoy is my travel down two much smaller, less traversed venues. Beautiful gems that are a mix of public and private land; floatable legally by respecting the rights of those areas where the stream sides are privately owned.

What they will NOT read about are the failed efforts; the little wet weather streams I tried that were blocked by low-water barbwire gates.

A couple of portages where I carried a “much more stable” kayak that almost deserved its own zip code.

The paddle I had to replace because it was all that stood between me and a small, but contrary swaybacked old horse defending its owner’s property rights. (The horse was unharmed; the paddle used to help propel the aforementioned watercraft over the nearest fence. It was left as tribute for the horse).

Readers will NOT see pictures of the several fish I caught on one of the streams, as being a virtual novice to kayaking I was never able to navigate the stream, land the fish AND retrieve the camera from its waterproof container all at once.

Being in a canoe on a flush river fared no better picture-wise. I did get a nice shot of fried rock bass and potatoes once ashore!

The readers of this wonderful, nearly half-century old magazine will NOT see nor read about my overnight camping. It didn’t happen.

Flash flood warnings and thunderstorm alerts drove me and my aluminum Grumman off the water and initiated a change in plans. An

A cave on Barren Fork provides floaters something else to explore.

RiverHillsTraveler.com

Twin Springs

overnight trip became a two-day trip, with several days in-between the two sections.

Readers will NOT read about the debris I decided to collect; its presence marring an otherwise beautiful adventure.

Sinkin’ Creek

Nor about the fact that as maneuver’able as they are, kayaks and spines in their seventh decade are not that compatible.

Joys of freelance.

(Rick Mansfield can be reached at emansfield2004@yahoo.com.)

June 2019 • Page 3

RiverHillsTraveler.com

What we have now is a new norm & memories

T

he young man sitting beside me was an ambitious fella from Poplar Bluff, Mo. He was hungry to ride shotgun in my canoe for a day.

I was taking him fishing for smallmouth bass here in the Ozarks.

The young man had read one of my smallmouth fishing stories in some magazine and decided he would like to spend a day floating and fishing from my canoe.

He told me that he wanted to float a stream that has been an inspiration to me. He said he wanted to experience what I had experienced.

That summer morning came. As we drove he asked me questions about the Little Black River. Will we see any snakes? Do you Richard think the fish will Whiteside be biting? How many times have ———— you been there?

I smiled at his excitement. New places do that to people like him and like me.

Anticipation is a word that is used to describe the feeling one has as they tie on a large topwater plug in July on an Ozark stream, and we were past ready.

Pushing off with the paddle blade the canoe came alive. The canoe came alive as the current of the river grabbed it. It felt good to be back on familiar waters with so many early life memories.

Looking upstream where the Big Eddy heads up, I looked up through the narrow run and riffle.

I launched a heavy Pop R 35 yards upstream in the lower end of the riffle and within 3 seconds the water exploded.

My plug was now in the mouth of a 3-pound river largemouth.

Just that fast, before he had even gotten his plug selected for the morning, he could already feel the front of the canoe where he was sitting being turned from the weight of me horsing the first fish of the day with my 12 lb. test line.

I think that is when he realized the

benefit of heavy line on your spool.

The guy was an experienced lake fisherman that had caught his fair share of crappie out of Wappapello Lake.

Even though he was a lifelong fisherman, to him this style of fishing was very much new in every way.

Side-casting was something he had never practiced, and side-casting and hitting your mark with the plug is something you need to be able to do while float fishing tight Ozark streams from a canoe.

After a few miles we came to an area where many families used to frequent on hot summer weekends.

Local clannish hill folks of long bloodlines would camp there on that flat spot I told him.

I snugged the canoe up to the left bank. Pointing to the other bank I began to describe to him my childhood.

“Over there is where the old sycamore tree once stood that had a

rope swing in it,” I said. “The hole of water was deep back then and no lily pads were here. The sound of people and kids playing was in the air along with the smell of a campfire and BBQ. “Beside our canoe used to be a spring where we kept our watermelon and cantaloupes.”

As he looked down in the river all the way across you could see the scum-layered bottom. The deep hole of water is only in my memory.

I told him this is why we catch mostly Kentuckys and largemouth these days. The days of big smallmouth and goggle-eyes are long gone and this is the new norm, I told him.

Between the river filling in with gravel, nutrient pollution and otters being released, we have lost a lot of fish. The gooney birds (cranes) have decimated the small fish and river bullfrogs, I told him.

“When I was a kid I could fill a coffee can with crawdads in an hour. No more crawdads,” I said.

We were lucky enough to watch one crane pluck a half-dozen baby bass out of the shoal in the time it took us to eat our bologna sandwiches.

“Times that by thousands of cranes doing that from daylight to dark,” I said. “It’s a wonder any fish are left.”

A few bends down we were at the old baptizing hole. His words were “it’s so shallow now you couldn’t baptize a baby.”

Told him it didn’t used to look like this.

On the way back to town I told him that he will never actually see what inspired me as a young person, that river is gone now.

What we have now is a new norm and memories.

(Richard Whiteside lives in Doniphan, Mo., and can be reached at rlwhiteside72@gmail.com. His blog can be followed at www.ozarkriverman.wordpress. com.)

Lost Your o Leasse?

WA ANT YOUR OWN FA O ARM? RM?

2019 HUNTING DATES IN MISSOURI

2019 FALL TURKEY HUNTING DATES • Fall Firearms Turkey Season: Oct. 131 2019–2020 ARCHERY DEER AND TURKEY HUNTING DATES • Sept. 15 through Nov. 15 and Nov. 27 through Jan. 15, 2020 2019 – 2020 FIREARMS DEER HUNTING DATES • Firearms Deer Early Youth Portion: Nov. 2-3 • Firearms Deer November Portion: Nov. 16-26

• Firearms Deer Late Youth Portion: Nov. 29-Dec. 1 • Firearms Deer Antlerless Portion: Dec. 6-8 • Firearms Deer Alternative Methods Portion: Dec. 28 through Jan. 7, 2020.

Details on hunting regulations, harvest limits, allowed methods, required permits, and other related information will be available in MDC’s “2019 Spring Turkey Hunting Regulations and Information” and MDC’s “2019 Fall Deer & Turkey Hunting Regulations and Information” booklets.

Both are available where permits are sold prior to the related seasons.

Share your fishing, hunting, floating & travel photos with the Traveler!

Send us your travel, fishing, camping or other outdoors photos and we will publish them in our next issue. Text them to us at (417) 451-3798, along with the pertinent info, or email them to

jimmy@riverhillstraveler.com

FFIND YOUUR FAAVVORITTE PLACE Call Joe Pen ndergrass

57 73 368-1402

EACH MOSSY OAK PROPE ERTIES OFFICE IS INDEPENDENTLY OW WNED AND OPERATED.

Page 4 • June 2019

RiverHillsTraveler.com

Anniversary of ‘Super Derecho’; Mingo photos

F

or the month of June, Table Rock Lake is celebrating National Camping and Great Outdoors Month.

Summer is here and it’s time to get out your tents, put on your hiking shoes, and get out and explore our beautiful great outdoors.

Throughout the month, the Dewey Short Visitor Center will feature displays and activities for visitors of all ages to learn about various outdoor opportunities and how to be safe this summer.

The visitor center is open daily from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Located just south of Table Rock Dam on State Highway 165 in Branson, it offers several interactive displays, a Jimmy Sexton 22-minute film ———— about the purpose Journey On and construction of the dam, and viewing decks overlooking Table Rock Lake and dam.

Picnic facilities and a 2.2 mile asphalt surface trail are also located on the visitor center grounds. Park rangers will provide short programs on Table Rock Lake every Monday, Wednesday and Friday beginning at 11 a.m.

The visitor center is a great place to take the family, with clean restrooms and lots to do inside and out. And, sitting on the outside deck of the facility, you have an excellent view of the lake and dam.

Plus, and don’t hold me to this, I believe you can see the Fourth of July fireworks from across the lake.

——— Ten years ago, a fast-moving complex of severe thunderstorms brought damaging winds, large hail, tornadoes,

A

while back ago I wrote about some changes, big and small, between today and 150 years ago in the Missouri Ozarks as related to wildlife, domestic animals, landscape, crops, etc.

In the same column I briefly mentioned that just a few decades before the timeframe being talked about, elk and buffalo roamed our hills and prairies. I got to thinking about that afterward, and wondered if anyone doubted the asserWes Franklin tion that bison ———— were here in Native Ozarker Southwest Missouri.

If so, let me tell you a story. I actually don’t know how true it is, to be honest. It’s just one of those stories passed down into local lore. It was recorded in J.A. Sturges’ 1897 “Illustrated History of McDonald County, Missouri” and he said he received it from “reliable” sources.

Before what is today Newton and McDonald counties were settled in the late 1820s and 1830s, there was an unnamed Catholic missionary who ven-

Trees damaged by the 2009 “Super Derech” that hit southern Missouri.

and flooding to southern Missouri.!

NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center called this storm the “Super Derecho” because it was one of the most intense and unusual wind storms ever observed.

The derecho produced significant and often continuous damage over a broad swath from the high plains of western Kansas to the foothills of the Appalachians in eastern Kentucky.

Every Mark Twain National Forest ranger district was affected by the derecho.!There were power outages, damage to property, buildings, and recreation site facilities.!Trees were down across swaths of forest land.!

Forest Service employees and other first responders spent the days immediately after the storm working to free campers and local residents trapped by roads obstructed by fallen trees.!

When aerial flights could be made, it was estimated that more than 29,000 acres of Mark Twain National Forest lands received catastrophic damage, along with thousands of acres of private and state-owned lands.

Native bison tured into this wild country to evangelize the local Indian tribes.

On the campaign, flash floods caused the party to come to a halt somewhere between a creek and a river. They were forced to camp out until the waters receded, and thus went hunting. And what did they find? A buffalo cow.

Yes, it became supper, and probably many suppers, sustaining the missionary and his group until they could safely ford the waters and continue on their evangelical mission. The hide was tanned and preserved and the missionary named the creek “Buffalo Creek” to mark the occasion.

The river he named “Cowskin,” which used to be another name for Elk River, and is still the name of the Elk River arm of Grand Lake. From that we also get Cowskin Prairie, of course.

If the story about the buffalo cow is true it is just a quaint illustration of the fact that buffalo were at one time present in the area that most of you reading this call home.

But I wouldn’t just count on that story alone, even if it could be confirmed as true.

Bison remains have been found throughout Missouri, including Southwest Missouri, and verified as such. An interesting booklet titled “Bison in Missouri Archaeology” by R. Bruce McMillan can be downloaded from on-

The Forest Service spent much of the last decade addressing the management challenges created by the Super Derecho.!Timber blown down or damaged was salvaged through timber sale contracts and permits and sent to local mills.!

Fuel breaks were created along roads and on ridges as a preventative measure in the event wildfires started in areas with heavy amounts of blown down trees.!Recreation facilities and trails were repaired and cleared.!

Still today, the effects of the Super Derecho are felt when planning and implementing projects in hard hit areas of the national forest.

——— The 14th annual Mingo Swamp Friends Flora and Fauna Photo Contest is open for entries until Aug. 1. Youth and adults are invited to enter.

Photos can be entered in any or all of four categories: native wildlife, native plants, people in nature, and Mingo landscapes. Photos of people and landscapes must be taken on the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.

line for free for those really wanting to dive into an in-depth study. Or you can let me read it for you, which I did.

The fact that bison were here up until at least the first part of the 1800s is simply treated as a given in the publication. I imagine very small herds of buffalo held out another decade or two after most of their kind moved west due to settlement and everything that meant.

Buffalo have not been reintroduced to Missouri as elk have. What I mean by that is they are not truly wild. The herds are fenced in. I don’t really see a practical way to make it otherwise.

That said, in 2012 it was announced that pureblood bison calves were born on a Missouri prairie for the first time since the 1840s. This happened at an enclosed tall grass prairie site managed by a non-profit organization in northwest Missouri.

The buffalo are 100 percent bison, and not crossbred with domestic cattle in their lineage, part of one of only eight herds in the entire country that can claim such.

So they aren’t technically “wild.” But they are native. Just like their ancestors.

(Wes Franklin!can be reached by email at cato.uticensis46@gmail.com, or by USPS mail at 12161 Norway Road, Neosho, MO 64850.)

Photos will be judged on overall impact, technical excellence, originality, and subject matter appropriate to Mingo. Photos from youth and adults are judged separately.

Contestants may enter any number of photos, but all photos must be 8”x10” in size. There is no entry fee for youth.

There is a fee of $5 for each adult entry.

A digital file of the photo must also be submitted. Winning photos will be matted for display by the Swamp Friends. Cash awards will be given for first, second and third place in each of the four categories, and for Best of Show for adults and for youth.

The winning photos will be displayed in the coming year around southeast Missouri and St. Louis. The winning photos from 2011 through 2018 can be viewed on the Mingo Swamp Friends website at www.mingoswampfriends.org.

Rules and entry forms are available on the website and at the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center north of Puxico off Highway 51. Call (573) 222-3589 for more information.

(Jimmy Sexton is owner and publisher of the River Hills Traveler. He can be reached by phone or text at (417) 451-3798, or jimmy@riverhillstraveler.com.)

On the Cover

A group of floaters enjoy a day on the Jacks Fork, outfitted by Windy’s Canoe Rental.

(Photo by MyraGale Sexton)

River Hills Traveler 212 E. Main St., Neosho, MO 64850 Phone: (417) 451-3798 Fax: (417) 451-5188

www.riverhillstraveler.com Email: jimmy@riverhillstraveler. com Owner & Publisher Jimmy Sexton Managing Editor Madeleine Link Circulation Manager Rhonda Sexton Staff Writers Wes Franklin • Mike Roux Bill Wakefield • Bill Oder Judy Smith • Michelle Turner Dana Sturgeon • Bill Hoagland Richard Whiteside • Ronnie Moore Advertising Jimmy Sexton & Madeleine Link

River Hills Traveler, established in 1973, is published monthly by Sexton Media Group and Traveler Publishing Company. Postmaster: Send change of address notices to: River Hills Traveler, 212 E. Main St., Neosho, MO 64850. Subscription prices: $22 per year; 2 years, $40. Back issues available up to one year from publication, $5 plus sales tax & shipping.

COPYRIGHT © 2019 No part of this publication may be reproduced without the express written permission of the publisher of the River Hills Traveler or his duly appointed agent. The publisher reserves the right to reject any advertising or editorial submission for any reason.

June 2019 • Page 5

RiverHillsTraveler.com

Gentry Cave in Stone County

VINTAGE OZARKS

G

entry Cave, a remote cave — on private land and hard to get to — three miles south of Galena in Stone County, was described by Louella Agnes Owen in Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills (1898).

Hiking through the woods after the mail coach’s wheel broke, the intrepid lady cave explorer found the “broken” landscape captivating: “The topography was... very beautiful with the dense forest lighted by the slanting yellow rays of the afternoon sun. The way leads up to the 'ridge road' which is at length abandoned for no road at all and descending through the forest, more than half the distance down to the James River flowing at the base of the hill, we come suddenly in view of the cave entrance, which is probably one of the most magnificent pieces of natural architecture ever seen.”

From James Fork of the White: “She found the cave interior worth the walk but does not mention the abundance of bat guano that would later provide the basis for an unusual industry. During the lean Depression years, one C.L. Weekly and two hires shoveled tons of dried bat manure into hundred-pound bags and shipped it off to be used for greenhouse fertilizer. He got $35 a ton."

The commercial exploitation of bat guano was also 5 years ago • The morning dawned cloudy and cool, a mere 69 degrees, after several days of 90 degree-plus weather. I welcomed the cooldown.

The day before, I had endured 11 hours of pollen-filled winds and the blazing hot sun of Lake of the Ozarks, while pitching Senkos to bedding largemouth bass.

Today, however, I would be accompanying Will Rollins on the Gasconade River for smallmouth bass. (Bill Cooper) • If you ask the average canoeing beginner what they want in a fishing canoe, chances are that stability will be at the top of their list.

The reason for this is probably the folk wisdom that canoes are inherently tippy, reinforced by the hordes of paddlers that wend their wet way down the popular Ozark streams, crashing into rocks and logs and frequently flipping.

But all canoe designs are compromises between tracking ability and maneuverability, and between speed and stability.

(Al Agnew) 10 years ago • When the smallmouth bass crashed through the surface of the clear creek, I knew that I was back in a good place.

My son’s rod bent, and his reel drag squeaked as the strong fish fought to get back under its log in the shadows of willow run.

My son skillfully whipped the fish down and then eased the two-pounder out of the creek for our inspection. He smiled at me, I smiled at him, and the fish was released in the tail of the current run so it could find its way back home.

(Ed Mashburn) • Waterspouts have different meanings to each enthusiast, but fishing is often a part of that activity. And, while many of us like to catch a few fish for fun or a

Real photo postcard by Galena photographer, D.F. Fox.

the first impetus for the development of Marvel Cave, which became the centerpiece of a much later tourist attraction in Stone County — Silver Dollar City.

In Caves of Missouri (1956), J Harlan Bretz discusses Gentry Cave’s geology: “A rock shelter at Camp Ramona, 85 feet below cliff top and 50 feet above James River contains four of the five entrances to this joint-controlled cave system. Words are useless in describing the detailed interaction of passages; the cave pattern is too complicated.

"One place in the cave showed cherty gravel, but there is no other evidence for vadose occupation of this splendid phreatic cave system. No red clay remnants and very little dripstone were seen anywhere in the cave.”

(This feature is courtesy of Leland and Crystal Payton at Lens & Pen Press, publishers of all-color books on the Ozarks. Their most recent book, James Fork of the White, was published in 2017. Some pages from this book can be seen on www.beautifulozarks.com.)

REMEMBER WHEN

meal, our efforts don’t always pan out on busy holiday weekends.

Coping with waterspouts traffic on a holiday weekend is a matter of changing fishing locations, presentations and expectations. Add to that, area lakes may be very murky from recent thunderstorms.

When the water rises, fish move to shallow areas of flooded shoreline rocks or brush looking for minnows that are feeding on insect life. (Darrell Taylor) 20 years ago • Squirrel hunting has a long tradition in the Ozarks. Squirrels, more so than any other wild game species, have been the main course over innumerable time for hill country family meals.

And, squirrels once ranked as the most sought-after game species in Missouri.

Squirrel hunting today is not as popular as it once was, yet it still serves as an introduction to hunting for many upstarts.

Additionally, squirrel hunting provides the individual hunter the opportunity to enjoy a great sport as well as to hone woodsman skills and sharpen shooting abilities.

Squirrel hunting is also an activity that the whole family can enjoy. (Bill Cooper) • It was almost a non-story, in spite of a good-sounding theme. Consider. I was going fishing with a fellow who uses antique lures almost exclusively, but we were going to fish out of individual kayaks — something not new perhaps, but certainly new to Traveler’s pages.

Having told you that, what remains?

We fished a section of the St. Francois River, we caught six different species, but all and all, the fishing was pretty slow that day.

But as it turns out, I learned a lot about lures of yesteryear as well as today.

Steve White, of St. Louis, is into antique lures both as a hobby and as a sideline business, and has a collection of 6,500 of the things. (Bob Todd) 30 years ago • Have you ever wished you actually could have been there to feel the roaring enthusiasm, be with the colorful characters and be part of the frenzied activity that marked the great California Gold Rush days of 1849? You may get your wish.

Odds are, we Ozark folks may be plopped right in the middle of the great 1990s Ozark Gold Rush and it will be our doorstep that all those colorful gold rush characters will come rushing to.

In April 1989, geologists from the Missouri Geological Survey, several other state geological surveys, the U.S. Geological Survey, various universities, and mining companies met in St. Louis to discuss the possibility that our Missouri Ozarks may contain giant lowgrade gold deposits. (Bill Judd) • The U.S. Forest Service has made considerable improvements to a place called Bay Nothing on Current River since I last spent any time there.

Last time I’d been there at all by land, the road was so rough the kids I took

there to launch their canoes almost beat me back to Doniphan. (Bob Todd) 40 years ago • Jacks Fork. A simple name: concise, typically Ozark. No flowery adjectives, no fancy French or Indian names. Nothing to tell you what kind of stream it is.

Current, at least, adequately describes one characteristic of that river. Jacks Fork. The largest tributary to Current River. Just a smaller version of the Current?

A glance at a topographic map will show one of the features that make the Jacks Fork different.

It is as close to a canyon river as you will find in the Missouri Ozarks; its valley narrow and steep-waled, a rugged, winding furrow across a relatively flat remnant of the Salem plateau. (Al Agnew) • The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 were probably the most violent recorded by man on the North American continent, and one of them, the one on Feb. 7, 1812, may have been the most violent in the world in historic times.

In a previous story of this series, we learned of the adventure of a riverboat crier upstream from New Madrid during the night the Feb. 7 earthquake occurred.

In the town of New Madrid, one settler who had not left the country due to the shocks, was Eliza Bryan and some years later, he wrote an account of what happened at New Madrid. (Bob Todd) (compiled by MyraGale Sexton)