Sharing Our Streams

An ongoing discussion between stream frontage landowners and river recreationists involves the sharing of that sirloin steak found on the ShowMe State’s natural resource menu – its miles of floatable waterways. The rivers of the state, particularly in the southern portion, are heavily used by canoeists, rafters, kayakers, anglers, campers, spelunkers, and swimmers. And most streamside landowners are also river recreationists.

I can identify with this duality on a personal level. My grandfather spent most of his eight decades working a farm that featured a half mile of river frontage along the middle Meramec. The five children he raised grew up fishing and swimming and gigging in the river. Later, they brought most of us grandkids down to the banks to camp and fish for several days at a time.

As an adolescent and teen, I stayed with my grandparents for weeks. When I was seventeen, an ailment put my thenwidowed grandfather in the hospital most of the summer, but I stayed with my aunt and cousin, who had moved into the old farmhouse. I was ostensibly there to fulfill Grandpa’s commitment to the Rural Electric Association to keep the brush cleared from beneath the power line that came over the ridge to the farmhouse. I’ll readily admit that some days I didn’t get much brush cleared, because the river constantly called my name.

After Grandpa passed away that fall and the lower elevation acreages of the farm were sold to the government to build a lake that never got built, I continued to use my favorite stretch of the Meramec, along with other Ozark streams, as a float-fisherman. Later on, my cousin bought some streamside acreage a few miles upstream from the previous site of the family farm. I’ve been privileged to camp and picnic there and use his property as a base for fishing and gigging forays.

My point in recounting this family history is to validate my qualifications to speak for both sides—streamside landowners and river users. I’ve been down the river and back, and waded from one bank to the other.

Figuratively speaking, I’ve straddled both sides of that infamous barbed wire that was stretched across the upper Meramec, to discourage floaters. It triggered the Missouri Supreme Court case, Elder vs. Delcour, in 1954. Even though I was a mere toddler that year, I could easily have been one of the witnesses to the 2013 shooting on an Ozark gravel bar of a floater by a landowner which tested the limits of that ruling.

To illustrate, allow me to dive deeper into some of my experiences from the landowner side of the equation. One morning during that summer I spent on Grandpa’s farm, a man and his son showed up at the house. They looked like they’d spent a sleepless night on the river, which they had. They had misjudged the length of their float and been caught by darkness. They chose to stop for the night at the gravel bar we Slovenskys customarily used to launch our boats, fish from the bank, and access our favorite swimming hole. In many ways, we considered it “our” gravel bar.

During the night, the floaters had spotted Grandpa’s house on the hillside across the bottomland fields. Too weary to continue their float, they had walked across the fields and halfway up the hill to knock on the door.

We recognized the name of their canoe outfitter, and offered to drive them to that location in my aunt’s car. We also allowed the outfitter to come pick up his canoe and paddles later that day. I’d like to think we did the right thing; both parties seemed very appreciative.

Another time, a different outfitter drove his truck down the mile-long driveway to the house and asked if he could put in at our gravel bar so that his teenage daughter could dive for some gear that one of his clients had lost as a result of a swamped canoe. Grandpa knew the outfitter, and readily granted permission I’m sure my grandfather could have told me more stories of a similar nature.

In the sixties and seventies, our extended family camped at the gravel bar, fishing, swimming, and socializing to our heart’s content. During those years, one of my cousins attached a rope to a sycamore tree that hung out over our favorite swimming hole, adjacent to the gravel bar. Before long, the hanging rope attracted passing floaters.

Our swims were frequently interrupted, as was fishing from “our” gravel bar. Ultimately, we took the rope down rather than deal with its downsides.

A hundred yards upstream from our swimming hole was a small cave we called The Bear Cave. Its entrance was just above the water level during normal flow. The small opening quickly narrowed down, becoming too small for human access. We never witnessed anyone stopping to investigate the cave. However, larger caves have proven problematic for other landowners, creating emergency rescue situations and cave vandalism incidents.

Downstream from my Grandpa’s farm, my Dad took my brother and me to another cave he knew of, halfway up a high bluff on the river. We were likely trespassing, but the memory of that experience raises several questions, such as whether spelunkers have the right to climb a riverside bluff to explore a cave, exactly where a high-water mark would be defined on such a bluff, and which caves are off limits to the public.

Grandpa’s farm also featured a slough, a quarter-mile stretch of the former river channel. The slough was not visible from the river itself, being separated by silted-in areas at its upper and lower ends, and from the current river channel by two corn fields. Only family members and locals knew of it.

The slough got flooded by the river and restocked with fish periodically. But its ecology differed from the river’s, characterized by still water and lush aquatic vegetation. In the slough, we caught primarily bluegills, crappie, bullheads, and largemouth bass. The goggle-eye, longear sunfish, suckers, and smallmouth bass prevalent in the nearby Meramec were largely absent because these species were not well adapted to the still waters of the slough. We treasured that special environment, and the honeyhole it represented.

Interestingly, not long after Grandpa had bought the farm in the early 1900’s, he went to court in an unsuccessful effort to claim the acreage between the slough and the river. He lost the case, understandably so, but purchased the river bottom fields, which were and remain inaccessible from the opposite side of the river.

Our family’s riverside campground lay between the swimming hole gravel bar and the lower end of the slough, on a slight rise. It would have been above the “high water mark” described in Elder vs. Delcour, and I suspect we would have been on solid ground forbidding any floaters from camping on it. To my knowledge, that never came up. The gravel bar itself was too small to pitch more than one tent, and apparently no floaters were brazen enough to “borrow” the picnic table we had chained to a tree on the higher ground. At least not that we ever witnessed.