Chronology

Deep-time dates are rounded as geologists give them. Prehistoric periods are given in radiocarbon years, the boundaries Chapter 3 follows. Where the record gives two dates for one event, both are shown. Within each part the entries run in date order, and the parts on timber and on mills, roads and visitors cover some of the same decades.

Deep time

• About 1.48 billion years ago. Eruptions of silica-rich magma build the Eminence caldera around the place where the Jacks Fork now meets the Current, and the ground collapses into a broad basin; these are the oldest rocks in the Jacks Fork country (Chapter 1).
• About 1.47 billion years ago. Lava cools at Shut-In Mountain near Rocky Falls, dated at 1,470.4 million years (Chapter 1).
• About 1.46 billion years ago. Granite near Big Spring cools underground, dated at 1,461.8 million years (Chapter 1).
• About 1.46 billion to a little over 500 million years ago. Long erosion wears the volcanic country down to buried hills, and more than 800 million years go missing from the record at the Great Unconformity, about 980 million at Rocky Creek (Chapter 1).
• A little over 500 million years ago. A warm, shallow sea floods the worn-down land near the equator, the volcanic knobs become islands, and the Lamotte, Bonneterre and Elvins layers begin to pile up around them (Chapter 1).
• About 501 to 485 million years ago. In the Late Cambrian sea the Potosi and Eminence dolomites form, and mats of microbes build stromatolite reefs (Chapter 1).
• About 485 to 470 million years ago. A shoreline moving back and forth across southern Missouri lays down the Gasconade Dolomite, the Roubidoux Formation and the Jefferson City and Cotter dolomites, the rock of the river’s bluffs and uplands (Chapter 1).
• About 470 million years ago. The youngest bedrock of the Jacks Fork country is laid down, and nothing survives from then until the loose gravel of the last few million years (Chapter 1).
• About 359 to 323 million years ago. In the Mississippian Period the sea returns at least once and leaves limestone, later eroded away except for loose blocks of chert on the uplands (Chapter 1).
• Roughly 300 million years ago. Mountain-building to the south and east squeezes the region, opening faults and joints, sending hot fluids through the rock that leave lead ore and turn limestone to dolomite, and raising the Ozark dome (Chapters 1 and 2).
• About 252 to 66 million years ago. Through the Mesozoic Era the Ozarks are dry land wearing down, and no rock of the dinosaurs’ age is preserved here (Chapter 1).
• About 66 million years ago to the present. Through the Cenozoic Era weathering and erosion go on, and the rivers cut their valleys, bluffs and hollows (Chapters 1 and 2).
• About 2.6 million years ago. The Pleistocene ice ages begin; the ice sheets stop near the Missouri River, and the cold reaches the Ozarks as frost-shattered slopes, blowing loess and northern plants (Chapters 1 and 2).
• About 12,500 to 9,300 years ago. The upper twenty feet of fill under a high terrace on the Current is laid down as the ice age ends (Chapters 2 and 3).
• About 12,000 years ago. The ice ages end, and by about 12,000 radiocarbon years ago a forest of oak and other hardwoods has replaced the spruce and pine of the Ozark plateau (Chapters 1 and 3).

First peoples

• More than 13,000 years ago. People begin to stop on the bench at Two Rivers, a seasonal camp they will use for more than 13,000 years (Chapter 3).
• About 9250 to 7500 B.C. In the Paleoindian period a few hunters leave fluted points in the valleys, among them a fluted fragment at Two Rivers, read as a Clovis point and, in 2016, as a Sedgwick point of Arkansas chert (Chapter 3).
• About 8950 to 7900 B.C. Dalton people camp at Alley Mill, Two Rivers and Akers, leaving serrated points, adzes and a buried base camp at Alley (Chapter 3).
• By about 8000 B.C. Ozark chert, as raw stone and as finished tools, is traveling to the lowlands to the southeast, and the valleys seem to be lived in without a break from about this time until perhaps 1300 (Chapter 3).
• About 7500 to 5000 B.C. Early Archaic people keep seasonal camps on the terraces (Chapter 3).
• From about 7000 B.C. The long warm, dry spell called the Hypsithermal pushes prairie east into Missouri, and in the Middle Archaic, about 5000 to 3000 B.C., people camp on the terraces near the water (Chapter 3).
• About 3000 to 600 B.C. In the Late Archaic sites grow more numerous, larger and denser, with stemmed dart points of chert, quartzite and rhyolite (Chapter 3).
• About 600 to 250 B.C. In the Early Woodland the first pottery, a few sand-tempered pieces, reaches the two rivers (Chapter 3).
• About 250 B.C. to A.D. 450. The Middle Woodland is known from a handful of sites, and stone cairns stand on the upper Current (Chapter 3).
• About A.D. 450 to 900. Late Woodland potters on the Jacks Fork and the upper Current temper their clay with crushed limestone, and the bow replaces the atlatl in the Midwest by about 750 (Chapter 3).
• Late in the 600s. Potters on the upland streams are probably tempering with shell, earlier than the great Mississippian centers, which take it up only after 1000 (Chapter 3).
• About A.D. 900 to 1200. In the Early Mississippian, people live in farmsteads and hamlets on the terraces and make shell-tempered pots and small arrow points (Chapter 3).
• Probably the 1000s. A wall-trench house stands and burns at the Shawnee Creek site, on a terrace of the lower river, the first such house found anywhere in the Current River region; a summary of its dates gives about A.D. 1025 to 1075 (Chapter 3).
• About 1250, or soon after 1300. The people of the upper and middle Current and the Jacks Fork leave the valleys, probably for the lowland towns to the southeast, and after 1300 the eastern Ozarks are largely empty (Chapter 3).
• 1500s and 1600s. Hunting parties, probably from the far southeast corner of Missouri, visit the empty valleys and leave a few arrow points and a broken fish-shaped bowl in a cave (Chapter 3).
• 1541. The Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto reaches the central Mississippi valley, among Mississippian peoples who may be the cultural kin of the river’s last villagers (Chapter 3).

Osage and Delaware years

• 1673. When Marquette and Joliet come down the Mississippi, the Osage control the country of the Current and the Jacks Fork (Chapter 4).
• 1706. The first of 39 fires recorded in fire scars on the pines near Alley Spring burns, and they come about one every five and a half years until 1915 (Chapters 4 and 16).
• 1753. During a drought of several years a fire scars more than a third of the pines on the Alley hillside (Chapter 4).
• 1779. By one account a William Mahan comes into the country with a hunting party of Shawnee and Delaware (Chapter 4; Reach I).
• 1793. The Spanish governor formally grants the Shawnee and Delaware a tract about twenty-five miles square near Cape Girardeau (Chapter 4).
• 1803. The Louisiana Purchase brings the Osage country under the United States (Chapter 4).
• 1808. By one account a son of William Mahan settles on Mahans Creek (Chapter 4; Reach I).
• November 10, 1808. At Fort Clark the Osage cede the land east of a line due south from the fort, the Jacks Fork included; the treaty is ratified on April 28, 1810 (Chapter 4).
• 1811. By one account Alley Spring stops for twelve hours and falls five feet in the year the New Madrid earthquakes begin (Chapter 1; Reach H).
• Before 1812. By one account, written down in 1980, a Delaware village stands near Alley Spring (Chapter 4).
• 1815. The Delaware abandon the Cape Girardeau tract, and Delaware hunters are working the upper Current basin from about this year; by a local tradition some Delaware and Shawnee settle on the Current in 1815 and stay until 1824 (Chapter 4).
• 1818. Henry Schoolcraft crosses toward the Current through pine forest and upland prairie and finds empty Osage camps (Chapters 4 and 16).
• October 3, 1818. In the Treaty of St. Mary’s the Delaware give up their Indiana lands, to be out by 1821 (Chapter 4).
• 1820 to about September 1822. Delaware families camp and plant along the Current and the Jacks Fork, and floods ruin their crops (Chapter 4).
• January 26, 1821. William Clark sends a map of the lands granted to the emigrant nations, with an oval about 45 by 90 miles, from below the mouth of the Jacks Fork to above the head of the Current, for the Shawnee and Delaware (Chapter 4).
• 1821. A government survey plat of the township around Alley Spring marks an Indian village (Chapters 4 and 5; Reach H).
• September 20, 1821. By one count 1,346 Delaware leave the White River in Indiana with Chief William Anderson, who camps on the way at a Delaware village on the Jacks Fork southwest of present Eminence (Chapter 4).
• June 2, 1825. The Osage cede all their remaining lands in Missouri (Chapter 4).
• September 24, 1829. At Council Camp on the James Fork the Delaware give up their Missouri country, and Anderson’s band moves to Kansas between 1829 and 1831 (Chapter 4).
• October 26, 1832. At Castor Hill the Shawnee and Delaware “late of Cape Girardeau” cede their last Missouri claims (Chapter 4).
• 1837. The Missouri militia drive Osage, Shawnee and Delaware hunting parties out of the state (Chapter 4).
• 1849. A member of the Chilton family later recalls Cherokee people camping that year in the river bottoms north of Eminence, then the county seat on the Current (Chapter 4).

Settlement to 1860

• 1820s and 1830s. The first American families come up the Jacks Fork in ones and twos, mostly from Kentucky and Tennessee (Chapter 5).
• Early 1820s. By one account Samuel McCormack brings his family to the country, and his son James takes up the land around Alley Spring (Chapter 5; Reach H).
• Before 1837. A gristmill, at one time called Mahan’s Mill, is running on the North Prong above the mouth of Sanders Branch (Chapter 5; Reach A).
• January 14, 1837. Shannon County is created from part of Crawford County and named for George Shannon of the Lewis and Clark expedition (Chapter 5).
• 1837. The road from Jefferson City to Little Rock is laid out, crossing the North Prong at a ford by the mill (Reach A).
• 1837 or 1838. Joseph Slater comes to work the copper on Shawnee Creek, under a hunter’s claim (Chapter 5).
• 1840. Surveyors map the land near Eminence and mark Slater’s mine on their plats, and a few settlers live at the mouth of the Jacks Fork (Chapter 5; Reach J).
• 1841. Shannon County is organized, with a county seat also called Eminence on the Current River, and the quarter section of the copper mine passes to John Epps Cowan on April 8 (Chapter 5).
• February 17, 1843. Texas County is created as Ashley County; it takes the name Texas on February 14, 1845 (Chapter 5).
• 1845. A fire scars about a fifth of the pines on the Alley hillside, probably as settlers clear land (Chapter 16).
• May 1848. The Current River Mining Company of New York buys the Slater mine and sinks a shaft more than a hundred feet (Chapter 5).
• December 1849, or 1860. A post office called Jack’s Fork opens in Texas County; its dates are also given as 1860 to 1902, and the river has its name by 1849, or by 1852 at the latest (Chapters 4 and 5).
• Before 1852. A settler named Helm, pronounced Hellum, lives by the spring in Barn Hollow (Chapters 5 and 18).
• June 1852. Texas County creates a township named Jack’s Fork for the river, later renamed Pierce (Chapters 4 and 5).
• 1852 or 1853. Isaac Winningham comes to Panther Hollow (Chapter 5).
• 1854. The Graduation Act cuts the price of long-unsold public land, and land entries in Shannon County jump from twenty-one before 1850 to 1,170 in the 1850s (Chapter 5).
• 1856. William Goldsberry, a Baptist preacher from North Carolina, settles on the site of present Mountain View (Chapter 5).
• March 2, 1857. Howell County is formed from Oregon and Ozark counties (Chapter 5).
• 1857. By one account the Current River Mining Company quits the Slater mine this year; by another it still has $30,000 invested there in 1860 (Chapter 5).
• About 1858. Jesse Eaton buys land on the Jacks Fork, probably the Eaton’s where a Union patrol stops in 1864 (Chapter 5).
• 1860. The Chapel post office opens near the future Mountain View, fifteen Chilton households live on the two rivers, and by one account Reuben Harlow’s mill on the upper river saws 60,000 feet of boards (Chapters 5 and 6).

The Civil War

• November 1860. Shannon County votes 123 for Breckinridge, 38 for Bell, 27 for Douglas and 2 for Lincoln (Chapter 6).
• December 1861. The Shannon County court holds its last term until October 1866 (Chapter 6).
• December 3 to 9, 1861. Thomas Roe Freeman attacks Salem, and Union cavalry pursue him “from Jack’s Forks to Spring Valley” (Chapter 6).
• March 7 and 8, 1862. The Union wins at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and a Union column bound there camps on the Jacks Fork (Chapter 6).
• June 17, 1862. The Fifth Kansas Cavalry skirmishes at the old county seat on the Current, and five prisoners are executed at the courthouse (Chapter 6).
• August 25, 1862. A Union patrol out of Salem catches Joshua Chilton swimming in the Jacks Fork near his house (Chapter 6).
• August 30, 1862. Joshua Chilton and four other prisoners are killed on the road from Salem to Rolla (Chapter 6).
• December 1862 to February 1863. Davidson’s Army of Southeastern Missouri forages through the Current hills, the largest Union force to cross them (Chapter 6).
• February 1863. Davidson’s army camps at the old county seat and uses the courthouse as a hospital, and part of it marches to Pilot Knob by way of the mouth of the Jacks Fork (Chapters 6 and 8).
• October 14, 1863. A skirmish is fought near Mahans Creek (Chapter 6).
• November 4 to 9, 1863. Lieutenant John Boyd’s patrol comes down the Jacks Fork and up Mahans Creek, killing ten men and burning twenty-three houses (Chapter 6).
• December 1863. A Union scout kills a guerrilla named Clark on the Jacks Fork (Chapter 6).
• During the war. The courthouse at the old county seat is burned, by Union soldiers or militia in some accounts and by persons unknown sometime after 1863 in others (Chapter 6).
• February 1864. Boyd’s patrol rides to Eaton’s on the Jacks Fork (Chapter 6).
• January 2 to 7, 1865. A Union patrol kills six men in the “Jack’s Fork Hills” (Chapter 6).
• March 1865. Bushwhackers shoot Dr. Thomas Reed and two of his sons (Chapter 6).
• 1865. Missouri’s new constitution requires voters and officeholders to swear they never aided the rebellion (Chapter 6).
• October 1866. The Shannon County court meets again, and through 1867 its officers apparently work from their homes and a log house on Billy Mahan’s farm (Chapter 6).
• Fall 1867. Governor Thomas Fletcher declares martial law in Shannon and Oregon counties, and William Monks’s state troops ride against the bands; civil law returns in December (Chapter 6).
• February 1868. By one account the county court meets at Mahan’s house and decides to move the county seat to the lower Jacks Fork, where Thomas J. Chilton gives the land and the new Eminence is laid out (Chapters 5 and 6).

Timber and rails

• 1871. O. H. P. Williams and E. B. Grandin tour southern Missouri and buy 30,000 acres in Carter County (Chapter 7).
• September 3, 1880. The Missouri Lumber and Mining Company is organized, and its first mill starts east of the Current that December (Chapter 7).
• 1880 to 1890. Shannon County’s population more than doubles, from 3,441 to 8,898 (Chapter 5).
• 1887 to 1889. The Current River Railroad is built east from Willow Springs through Mountain View, Birch Tree and Winona, cutting a trip of one or two weeks by wagon to four hours (Chapter 5).
• 1888. The railroad reaches the Grandin mill in late June (one account gives July 1, 1889) and lays out the present town of Mountain View (Chapters 5 and 7).
• 1893. Cordz-Fisher begins a tramway down Pine Hollow toward Mahans Creek, worked by the locomotive Euphemia (Chapter 7).
• 1897. The tramway reaches Delaware, where the tie works ship “40 car loads a day” (Chapter 7).
• By 1900. The Grandin mill is described as the largest in the country, by one account the largest in the world, and Grandin has more than three thousand people (Chapter 7).
• Fall 1902. Piled ties break the catch boom at Chicopee on the Current, and 5,000 go downriver (Chapter 7).
• 1903. Missouri Lumber and Mining has cut over 213,017 of its 324,017 acres and turns its buying north into Shannon County (Chapter 7).
• 1904. Cordz-Fisher shuts its Birch Tree mill (Chapter 7).
• December 1906. Shade Orchard sells his farm to the lumber company for the site of West Eminence (Reach I).
• 1907. In its most profitable year Missouri Lumber and Mining lays a standard-gauge line down Mahans Creek, across the Jacks Fork and up Horse Hollow to its camp at Angeline (Chapter 7; Reach I).
• May 24, 1907. Carthage fishermen floating from above Eminence write in their club register that they “Saw first engine cross Jack’s Fork” (Chapters 7 and 9).
• 1908. The line is incorporated as the Salem, Winona and Southern Railroad (Chapter 7).
• 1909. Missouri limits loose tie drives to 50,000 ties, and the Grandin mill whistle blows for the last time on September 25 as the mill moves to West Eminence (Chapter 7).
• 1909 or 1910. The Angeline post office opens, to close in 1929 (Chapter 5; Reach I).
• 1910. The West Eminence post office opens on January 20, and by the end of the year the new mill saws 70,000 feet of lumber a day (Chapter 7).
• 1912. Missouri outlaws the coupon system, Shannon County ships 21,020,000 feet of lumber, and Ozark Land and Lumber begins taking apart its Winona mill (Chapter 7).
• November 1918. The mill and train whistles at West Eminence blow for the armistice (Chapter 7).
• 1919. Missouri requires that all ties be rafted, and Missouri Lumber and Mining sells the West Eminence mill and leaves the Ozarks (Chapter 7).
• 1923. The T. J. Moss Tie Company buys 103,297 acres from Ozark Land and Lumber (Chapter 7).
• 1927. The Forked Leaf company cannot meet its payroll, and the West Eminence mill closes (Chapter 7).
• 1927, or after November 1928. The county poor farm moves to West Eminence, in 1927 by one account, and runs until 1948 (Chapter 7; Reach I).
• November 7, 1928. West Eminence is offered for sale (Chapter 7).
• 1929. The Salem, Winona and Southern takes up its rails along Mahans Creek, and a citizens’ association forms to push for national forests in Missouri (Chapter 7; Reach I).
• 1933. The legislature lets the federal government buy land for national forests in Missouri (Chapter 7).
• 1934. The Forest Service begins buying land, and by the end of 1935 about a fifth of Shannon County lies inside its purchase boundaries (Chapter 7).
• September 11, 1939. President Roosevelt proclaims the Clark and Mark Twain national forests (Chapter 7).

Mills, roads and the first visitors

• 1868. The heirs of James McCormack sell the land around Alley Spring to Ike Barksdale and John Daugherty, and about 1869 a mill with an overshot wheel stands at the spring, then called Mammoth Spring (Chapter 5; Reach H).
• About 1872. Samuel K. Gill, a Union veteran, settles in Barn Hollow (Chapters 5 and 18).
• 1874. Post offices open at Eminence (the date is also given as 1867 and 1844) and Summersville, and Jake Wingo starts the Current Wave at Eminence (Chapter 5).
• February 1875 to February 1876. Greenberry Harlow keeps the Harlow’s Mill post office at the ford (Chapter 8; Reach C).
• 1876. Eminence has about 250 people and a stage line forty-odd miles to the railroad at Salem (Chapters 5 and 8).
• About 1878 to 1880. Rival stores open at the site of Mountain View, and the west side is nicknamed “Possum Trot” (Chapter 5).
• March 25, 1879. By one account Alex Chilton is shot dead at Powell Spring by his uncle Andy Chilton (Chapter 6; Reach J).
• December 22, 1879. The Mountain View post office opens (Chapter 5).
• 1881. Charles Klepzig buys the Alley mill (Chapter 5; Reach H).
• September 1881. The story goes that Jesse James and his gang rest at the Boyd Hotel in Eminence after the Blue Cut robbery (Chapter 5).
• 1883. The Western Land and Cattle Company of London buys about 28,000 acres in Texas County along the North Prong (Chapter 5; Reach A).
• 1884. The Alley post office opens (Chapter 5; Reach H).
• 1888. Railroad officials found the Carter County Fishing and Shooting Club, whose register records catches on the Current and the Jacks Fork from 1889 to 1940 (Chapter 9).
• July 18, 1888. Peter Renfro shoots and kills Constable Charles D. Dorris at Summersville; he later hides out in a cave near home, is taken there in 1891, and after a second escape and a second capture his death sentence is commuted in May 1898 (Chapter 13).
• 1889. Eminence gets daily mail (Chapters 5 and 8).
• Spring 1890. A flood washes out much of the Alley mill dam, and Klepzig closes the mill (Chapter 14; Reach H).
• February 13, 1893. George W. McCaskill buys the Alley mill (Reach H).
• July 1894. McCaskill’s new roller mill at Alley is finished, and his picnic ground by the millpond draws crowds for boating, dancing, ball games and the Fourth of July (Chapter 9; Reach H).
• 1895. A great regional flood comes, and by one account Horse Hollow floods so high it cuts the river off and the Delaware School is washed from its foundation (Chapter 14; Reach I).
• 1895, or 1897. The Boyds buy the Alley mill (Reach H).
• 1897. Another great regional flood strikes (Chapter 14).
• July 9, 1898. The first appointment is made at the Arroll post office on the North Prong (Chapter 5; Reach A).
• About 1900. The spring takes the name Alley Spring, after the post office (Reach H).
• March 8, 1904. The Jacks Fork at Eminence crests at 27 feet (also given as 25), the highest known until 2017 (Chapter 14; Reach J).
• 1906. By one account a ferry begins working at Alley (Chapter 8; Reach H).
• 1907. Sylvanus J. Bunker founds the mill town of Bunker, where the Bunker-Culler company begins cutting in 1909 (Chapter 7; Reach F).
• 1909. A St. Louis newspaper’s account of Governor Herbert Hadley’s float on the Current speaks of the river’s “latent power” (Chapter 10).
• 1912. A Kansas City company buys Alley as a “pleasure resort,” some five hundred Odd Fellows come by train to West Eminence and on to its picnic ground, and Springfield men incorporate the Shannon County Hunting and Fishing Club, with cabins near Ebb and Flow Spring (Chapters 9 and 10).
• March 1913. Arroll men attend a bridge meeting at Buck Hollow Ford, and Baptists baptize candidates at the ford (Chapters 8 and 19; Reach A).
• 1913. Texas County lets the contract for a bridge at Buck Hollow over the objections of the Harlow Crossing’s backers, and a motorboat begins running between Chilton on the Current and Coot Bay at the mouth of the Jacks Fork (Chapter 8).
• 1913. A drought from April through August dries springs never known to fail, and the Current at Van Buren falls to 540 cubic feet a second (Chapter 14).
• 1913 and 1914. The county bridge at Buck Hollow goes up, the first bridge of what is now Steel Bridge, and it is in use by early 1915 (Chapters 8 and 18; Reach D).
• June 1915. Six Mountain View men float from Buck Hollow to Van Buren and come home by train (Chapter 9).
• 1915. The Current at Van Buren carries 125,000 cubic feet a second, the largest flood of its record until 2017, and the last fire scar forms on the Alley hillside (Chapters 14 and 16).
• March 1917. By one account Eminence’s first bridge, a narrow steel bridge, is finished (Chapter 8; Reach J).
• April 18, 1917. A second Jack’s Fork post office opens, at the mouth of the river, to close in 1954 (Chapters 4 and 8; Reach J).
• 1917. By one account Alley Spring stops for a few hours when a sinkhole opens about fifteen miles to the northwest, and comes back muddy (Chapter 2; Reach H).
• 1920. Missouri voters approve $60 million in road bonds, the state closes the deer season, and the opening of Camp Witbeck at Buck Hollow is given as this year (Chapters 7, 8 and 9).
• 1921. Willie A. Whitbeck buys the land below the Buck Hollow bridge, the Centennial Road Law lays out a state highway system, and the daily record of the Jacks Fork at Eminence begins (Chapters 8, 9 and 14).
• 1922. Route 17 appears on the state highway map, and a West Plains paper calls Camp Witbeck one of the most popular playgrounds of the southern Ozarks (Chapters 8 and 9).
• About 1922, or 1927. The Alley mill grinds for trade for the last time (Reach H).
• 1920s and 1930s. Rymer’s Rustic Ranch operates at Rymers, by one account a resort from the early 1900s (Chapter 9).
• 1928. Walter Bales begins guiding johnboat floats from Eminence, and Mountain View business and professional men buy river frontage at Radcliff Ford for an outing club (Chapters 8 and 9).
• 1929. E. T. Behrens builds a fishing camp at Bunker Hill, the Mountain View outing club’s camp near Buck Hollow is working, and the rural mail carriers picnic at Camp Witbeck (Chapters 8 and 9).
• 1930. Highway 19 reaches Eminence, and Route 106 appears on the state map (Chapter 8).

State park and federal river

• 1919. Missouri creates a state park program (Chapter 10).
• 1922 to 1924. A Birch Tree dentist, H. Kirkendall, proposes a state park along the Jacks Fork itself (Chapters 9 and 10).
• 1924. The state buys Alley Spring, the mill and 427 acres for $31,500 for one of its first state parks, and Big Spring and Round Spring become state parks too (Chapter 10; Reach H).
• 1926 and 1927. The state clears away Alley’s old store, blacksmith shop and spring house and builds a rustic store, a gravel road and a swimming beach on the spring branch (Chapters 10 and 19; Reach H).
• 1927. The wettest year on the Eminence record brings, by one account, a spring flood that breaks the Alley mill dam and carries off four new bridges in the park (Chapter 14; Reach H).
• June 13, 1928. A flood of about 40,000 cubic feet a second crests at Eminence (June 15 by another record), takes the park’s new store at Alley and, by another account, the four bridges (Chapters 8 and 14; Reach H).
• 1928. A gauge is set on Alley Spring’s branch, kept until 1939 (Chapter 12).
• 1933. A Civilian Conservation Corps camp is set up at Alley, and in 1933 and 1934 its men rebuild the mill dam and put up many of the park’s buildings, and by 1934 the mill is painted red; the same year the Kansas City Power Company is licensed to study three dams on the Current (Chapters 9 and 10; Reach H).
• Probably 1934. In a drought July Ward Dorrance floats from Mountain View to the Current and passes a hand-lettered sign reading “Hospital Cave Civil War” above Blue Spring (Chapters 9 and 13).
• October 1934. Alley Spring falls to its lowest recorded flow, 54 cubic feet a second (Chapter 12).
• 1934 and 1935. A concrete bridge for Highway 19 replaces the steel bridge at Eminence (Chapter 8; Reach J).
• August 28, 1936. The Jacks Fork at Eminence falls to 64 cubic feet a second, its lowest reading on record (Chapter 14).
• November 1936. Missouri voters create the Conservation Commission (Chapter 9).
• 1937. The Conservation Commission takes office under the amendment of 1936, Dorrance’s Three Ozark Streams is published, and by one account the new commission bans gigging until giggers win a short fall and winter season (Chapters 9 and 19).
• 1938. The Flood Control Act opens nearly any free-flowing stream in the country to a flood-control dam, the Eminence courthouse burns on May 23, and the Department of Conservation is organized (Chapters 5, 10 and 16).
• 1939. A place-name thesis records the story that the river was named for “an old Indian, John Jacks, who lived near the head of the stream” (Chapter 4).
• 1939 and 1940. The state builds the present Highway 106 bridge at Alley (Chapter 8; Reach H).
• 1940. Charles Whitbeck dies, and Camp Witbeck closes (Chapter 9).
• 1941. The camp is sold and renamed Cardinal Acres, Army engineers design dams at Blair Creek and Doniphan on the Current, and in September the oldest known low-water profile of the Jacks Fork is measured (Chapters 9, 10 and 12).
• 1943. The Ozark hellbender is described to science from a Current River specimen (Chapter 16).
• 1947. Behrens deeds Bunker Hill to the Missouri State Teachers Association (Chapter 9).
• 1949. Governor Forrest Smith puts the state on record against the Current River dams (Chapter 10).
• 1950. The Corps withdraws its dam plans, Cardinal Acres appears in Life, by one local account, and the Alley post office is renamed Alley Spring (Chapters 5, 9 and 10).
• 1950s. By the Park Service’s account of 1991, a pair of horses is turned loose that becomes the wild herd (Chapters 10 and 11).
• 1951. Leo Drey buys his first Ozark land and founds the Pioneer Forest (Chapter 10; Reach F).
• 1952. The state highway department takes over almost 12,000 miles of county roads and gives them letters, the source of the lettered routes around the river (Chapter 8).
• 1953 or 1954. Drey buys nearly 90,000 acres from National Distillers, the largest land purchase in Missouri’s history to that time (Chapter 10; Reach F).
• 1954. In Elder v. Delcour the Missouri Supreme Court opens floatable streams to floating, wading and fishing, the year is the driest on the Eminence record, and a federal basin committee endorses a free-flowing Current (Chapters 10 and 14).
• 1956. A joint state and federal study calls for a national recreation area on the Current, the Jacks Fork and the Eleven Point, and the river at Eminence falls to its lowest daily flow, 67 cubic feet a second, on September 16 and 22 (Chapters 10 and 14).
• Fall 1956. Oscar Hawksley, Frank Dahlgren and Jerry Vineyard found the Missouri Speleological Survey (Chapter 13).
• June 1957. Leonard and Virginia Hall put a canoe in at the forks, where the road reaches the stream “at a little low-water bridge” (Chapters 8 and 9).
• 1958. Hall’s Stars Upstream is published (Chapter 9).
• January 1960. The Park Service proposes an Ozark Rivers National Monument of about 113,000 acres, and in July a landowners’ association votes to oppose it (Chapter 10).
• September 1961. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall visits the Ozark rivers (Chapter 10).
• 1962. President Kennedy names the Ozark rivers among the parks he wants in March, and a Senate subcommittee holds a hearing at Big Spring in June (Chapter 10).
• January 14, 1963. Senator Symington and Congressman Ichord introduce the bill that becomes the park law (Chapter 10).
• August 27, 1964. President Johnson signs the law creating the Ozark National Scenic Riverways (Chapter 10).
• 1965. The Conservation Commission publishes Missouri Ozark Waterways, a float guide to thirty-seven streams, and Alley Spring is gauged again, to 1979 (Chapters 9 and 12).
• 1966. The first park tract is bought, the federal names board settles the name North Prong Jacks Fork, and a seepage run measures the river in the fall (Chapter 10; Chapter 12; Reach A).
• 1966 to 1969. Most of the Cardinal Acres cabins are torn down, and condemnation trials for park land are held from 1967 to 1970 (Chapters 9 and 10).
• 1969. Demolitions on park land are halted in July, Cardinal Acres’ 600 acres are sold to the United States for $83,000 on October 15, Missouri agrees to hand over its three river parks, and a state law ends the open range in Shannon County, the last in Missouri (Chapters 5, 9 and 10).
• January 1, 1970. Alley, Round Spring and Big Spring state parks pass to the Park Service (Chapter 10).
• 1971. A University of Missouri crew digs test trenches at Alley Spring, the first archaeology contracted inside the Riverways, and the Storys Creek School is moved to Alley (Chapter 3; Reach H).

The river since the park

• June 10, 1972. The Ozark National Scenic Riverways is dedicated at Big Spring, and the park counts more than three million visits that year (Chapters 10 and 11).
• 1972. A dye trace shows water lost from Jam Up Creek below Mountain View coming out at Big Spring on the Current (Chapter 12).
• 1973. Canoe-rental permits become formal concessions, and 145,792 canoeists float the Riverways (Chapters 9 and 10).
• April 1973 to May 1975. The Geological Survey makes the first thorough survey of the Riverways’ water (Chapter 17).
• 1974. The Park Service builds most of the Alley campground (Chapter 11; Reach H).
• April 22, 1974. The river at Eminence crests at 15.83 feet, and by one account a storm drowns three people in a camper at the mouth of Alley Hollow (Chapter 14; Reach H).
• August 11 to 17, 1974. Bacteria below a trail ride of 1,300 people and 500 horses near Alley reach up to 2,000 colonies (Chapter 17).
• 1975 to 1985. The park and the canoe-rental businesses fight a decade of lawsuits over permits (Chapters 9 and 10).
• 1977. The park’s river folder prints the Hospital Cave story as fact and the Meeting House Cave story as legend, and papers of 1977 and 1984 describe the Eminence caldera (Chapters 1 and 13).
• September 1978. Divers at Alley Spring go 450 feet back into its cave, and under the mill turbine and wheel they find a dart point cemented in iron, glass and sand (Chapter 3; Reach H).
• May 27, 1980. The state designates the Jacks Fork and Barn Hollow natural areas (Chapter 11; Reaches C and E).
• 1980 to 1982. The Missouri Speleological Survey studies the caves of the Riverways, mapping Jam Up Cave’s 1,749 feet of passage in October 1980 (Chapter 13).
• 1981. A draft plan judges the upper Jacks Fork around Jam Up Cave unsuitable for wilderness, the Cross-Country Trail Ride moves off park land, and Alley Mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 8 (Chapters 10 and 11).
• 1982. A state trace confirms the path from Jam Up Creek to Big Spring, a state biologist surveys mussels at eleven Jacks Fork sites, and the state begins releasing otters (Chapters 12 and 16).
• 1984. The park’s first general management plan is adopted (Chapters 10 and 11).
• 1985. The canoe-use zones split the river at Alley, a test pit at the Shawnee Creek site comes down on a burned house floor in June, and two floods top 17 feet at Eminence (Chapters 3, 9 and 14).
• 1986. The present Highway Y bridge over the South Prong is built, and the Shawnee Creek house is excavated (Chapters 3 and 8).
• 1986 to 1988. Two Rivers is tested and then excavated, producing more than fifteen thousand artifacts in 1987 and 1988 (Chapter 3).
• 1990. The county builds the low-water crossing at the junction of the prongs, the Shawnee Creek site is listed on the National Register, and in May the Park Service announces it will remove the wild horses (Chapters 3, 8 and 10).
• 1991. The park makes a roads and trails study and sets motorboat limits, and park visits peak a second time at a little over 2.3 million (Chapter 11).
• June 17, 1992. A federal court bars removal of the wild horses; the same year a buried Dalton camp turns up at Alley Mill, southern cavefish are recorded in the basin and the first hellbender survey finds four (Chapters 3, 10, 13 and 16).
• Early 1990s. A federal hydrologist and an oral historian interview older residents about the springs, the floods and the filling of the holes (Chapters 14 and 15).
• 1993. The Alley gauge begins, an appeals court overturns the horse ruling on June 15, and the flood of November 14 and 15 is the highest at Eminence since the daily record began in 1921 and the highest in the new Alley gauge’s record; Two Rivers is listed on the National Register (Chapters 3, 10 and 14).
• Mid-1990s. The state begins managing the Jacks Fork’s smallmouth under special rules, set as an 18-inch limit on the upper river by 2000 (Chapter 16).
• November 12, 1996. Federal law protects the wild horses, at no more than fifty (Chapters 10 and 11).
• 1997. The Conservation Department buys about 11,240 acres on the North Prong, and canoes make up 89 percent of the craft on the Jacks Fork (Chapter 9; Reach A).
• 1998. Missouri lists the Jacks Fork below Eminence as impaired by fecal bacteria (Chapters 10 and 17).
• February 2000. The gauge at the Highway 17 bridge begins recording the river’s stage, and its flow record begins in October 2001 (Chapter 14; Reach D).
• July 5, 2001. About 50,000 gallons of partly treated wastewater spill into Jam Up Creek at Mountain View (Chapters 12 and 17).
• July 10 to September 20, 2001. Dye poured below the Mountain View plant surfaces only at Big Spring, about thirty-eight miles away, at its strongest after forty-two days (Chapter 12).
• May 8, 2002. The flood of record at Highway 17 crests at 27.68 feet (Chapter 14; Reach D).
• 2002. The present Highway 19 bridge at Eminence replaces the bridge of 1934–35 (Chapter 8; Reach J).
• 2003 and 2004. Every bacteria violation on the lower river comes during a trail ride, and horses prove the leading source (Chapter 17).
• January 21, 2004. The federal Environmental Protection Agency approves the cleanup plan for the bacteria-listed lower river (Chapters 10 and 17).
• 2005. The present Highway 17 bridge is built (Chapters 8 and 15; Reach D).
• August 14 to 18, 2006. A seepage run measures the whole river, and a trace reported this year reaches Alley Spring from outside its mapped recharge area (Chapter 12).
• 2007. An angler catches the last hellbender known from the Jacks Fork, and the state designates the Alley Spring Natural Area (Chapter 16; Reach H).
• 2010. The fungus of white-nose syndrome reaches Missouri, and the park closes all its caves to visitors (Chapter 13).
• 2011. The Ozark hellbender is listed as federally endangered, and American Rivers names the Riverways among America’s most endangered rivers (Chapters 10 and 16).
• January 12, 2012. The federal Board on Geographic Names adopts four corrected names around Bee Hollow and Stillhouse Hollow, after the state board took them up on November 8, 2011 (Chapter 18).
• July 29, 2012. In the driest year at Highway 17 the river there falls to a daily average of 12.9 cubic feet a second (Chapter 14).
• 2013. Bunker Hill passes to the Friends of Bunker Hill, a baptism-permit dispute flares in the summer, and the park releases a draft management plan on November 8 (Chapters 9 and 10).
• 2014. Plan meetings draw more than 1,450 people in January, a bill to give the Riverways to Missouri is introduced on February 10, and the final plan is released in December (Chapter 10).
• January 22, 2015. The new general management plan is approved (Chapter 10).
• December 28 and 29, 2015. A flood reaches 21.9 feet at Highway 17 (Chapter 14).
• 2016. A team from the University of Kansas and Missouri State University reopens the excavations at Two Rivers (Chapter 3).
• March 30, 2017. The state extends its smallmouth special area on the Jacks Fork (Part Six).
• April 30, 2017. Floods of record crest at Alley at 23.29 feet and at Eminence at 27.72 feet, setting new marks at seven of the eight gauges on the Current and the Jacks Fork (Chapters 11 and 14).
• June 5, 2017. The United States Mint launches the Riverways quarter, with Alley Mill on its back, at Alley Spring (Chapter 11).
• 2017 to 2019. State biologists resurvey the mussel sites of 1982 and find far fewer mussels (Chapter 16).
• 2019. Water tests find no hellbender DNA, and the Jacks Fork is thought to hold ten or fewer (Chapter 16).
• 2020. The river has its wettest year at Highway 17 since flow records began and at Eminence since 1927, and aerial photographs show the Blue Spring pool narrowed to a channel (Chapters 14 and 15).
• December 2021 to May 2023. The river’s deepest line is sounded and its bridge cross-sections surveyed for federal flood maps (Chapter 15).
• April 15, 2022. New camping fees take effect (Chapter 11; Part Six).
• April 18, 2022. The park’s roads and trails plan is released in final form (Chapters 10 and 11).
• 2023. The core of the old state park at Alley, 259 acres, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Alley Spring State Park Historic District (Reach H).
• January 11, 2024. The Park Service’s new motorboat rule, published on December 12, 2023, takes effect (Chapter 11; Part Six).
• November 5, 2024. The flood at Highway 17 crests at 25.14 feet, its second-highest mark (Chapter 14; Reach D).
• 2025 and 2026. New reservation and fee rules come in for the park’s campgrounds (Chapter 11; Part Six).