Bay Creek to Alley

Below Bay Creek the Jacks Fork runs about five and a half miles1 to the head of the Alley Spring Campground, the last stretch of the upper river. From the mouth of the creek it swings east past Flat Top Bluff to the mouth of Island Branch, turns north along Grandma Rocks, bends east again at Fish Trap Hollow and runs past Boyd Branch to a big bend at Rail Tree Hollow, where it turns north for the last two miles2 into Alley. Through this reach the river falls about 7 feet a mile4. Bay Creek to Alley is floated as a trip of its own, the link between the upper river’s floats and the lower river’s3 (Chapter 20).

Here the valley begins to open. Above Bay Creek the river runs in a valley that is nearly a canyon5. Below it the valley widens in places to half a mile, and from a little above Alley Spring on down the bottoms were wide enough to farm, so crops were more common8 there than on the narrow river above. Some of the largest bluffs on the river stand here, sheer faces of 200 to 300 feet and, across from Grandma Rocks, the tallest on the river7, though they hold few caves compared with the bluffs upstream6. Large gravel bars are among the main features9 of the stretch. The inferred trace of the Low Wassie fault crosses the river a short way below Bay Creek, and the Hartshorn fault crosses about a mile above Alley10 (Chapter 1).

By one account of 1980, the logging era had changed this stretch perhaps more than any other part of the river, and few places below Bay Creek could still be called a hole of water. The bed had shifted again and again, leaving its old channels and filling the sloughs and bays beside them, the river divided into several chutes in high water, and in the dry months it could be called a mere creek11. By the same account the causes were the stripping of the forests and the yearly burning that followed, which left the hillsides bare to shed their chert down the hollows to the river, and the clearing of the banks, which opened up gravel that had long lain buried under the soil12 (Chapter 15). Between Bay Creek and Alley the river line on the topographic sheet of 1917 lies 500 feet or more from today’s channel in four places, near miles 27, 28, 30 and 31; whether the river moved there or the 1917 surveyors drew it loosely is unsettled13 (Chapter 15). A photograph taken upstream from Alley Spring about 1925 shows a wide, steady channel with vegetated banks, and a photograph of 1992 from the same place shows an extensive gravel bar14. An aerial photograph of November 1990 shows new gravel spread over what had been a productive field15, also upstream from the spring.

The logger who salted his cattle at Johnny Hollow, and who guided fishermen down near Alley16, remembered a family close to the spring who planted their crops to the river’s edge and fought to keep their bottom: “they’d clean out the main channel . . . to keep the river from making a rain channel,” and where the river came around a bend and cut into their land, “They’d cut saplings and brush and bank in against the bank there to keep it from washing out.” He also watched the river above Alley straighten and fill17 (Chapter 15).

In the dry week of August 2006 the river carried about 45 cubic feet of water a second above Bay Creek and about 51 at the Alley gauge, above the spring branch18 (Chapter 12). The last few miles above Alley are wide and shallow and may have to be walked in low water19. Cavers who floated past Bay Creek to Alley in April 2007, with the water still up several inches, scraped gravel now and then and never had to get out of their canoes, and outfitters at the time would not rent canoes for the stretch in summer, for fear the rocks would beat them up20. A floater, probably in 1934, found the pools growing “wider, deeper, longer”21 as the valley opened toward Alley (Chapter 9).

Mussels are scarce here. In 2017–19 timed searches found none, two and six at three sites spread through the last four miles above Alley22. In 2023 searchers found one species alive a little below Bay Creek and none at two sites a mile or so above the Alley access23 (Chapter 16).

The miles in the headings are counted from the junction of the prongs along the surveyed channel. Bay Creek is at mile 25.9, Island Branch at about 27.1, Fish Trap Hollow at 28.5, Rail Tree Hollow at 29.7 and the head of the campground at about 31.324. Left and right are as you face downstream. Because the river turns, the left bank is the north bank in some places and the west bank in others.

Bend by bend

Dyer Ford, the castle bluff and Boneyard Hollow

Ford, bluff and hollow · left bank · about miles 25.9 to 26.3 · Plate A9

Dyer Ford crossed the river at the mouth of Bay Creek25, below the old Joab Dyer Place (Reach F). Below it a small bluff borders the river on the left between Dry Hollow, which comes down beside Bay Creek27 and holds no visible water, and Boneyard Hollow. In winter, by one account, three upright rocks jut out of the cliff like the fortifications of a castle. Boneyard Hollow is said to be named for a nearby farm that used it to dispose of dead farm animals26. A slough called the Spring Bay began at its mouth. By 1980 the river had cut into the Spring Bay and it was gone, and thirty to forty feet had been cut off the left bank of the field below Bay Creek28.

Flat Top Bluff, Watson Hole and Island Branch Ford

Bluff, pool and ford · left bank (bluff) · about miles 26.3 to 27.0 · Plate A9

Flat Top Bluff stands on the left above the run east toward Island Branch. A spring with a pipe in it ran out at its upper end, and by 1980, after some dry years, it no longer ran all the time. The river used to divide along the bluff and make two islands. By 1980 the channel ran along the cut bank on the right. Watson Hole, wide and fairly shallow, lies along the lower end of the bluff, and it is said to be named for a family that lived on the farm to the right29. A little above the mouth of Island Branch, Island Branch Ford carried a road across the river to the old Buffington Place30.

Island Branch

Creek · right bank · about mile 27.1 · Plate A9

Around the next sharp bend Island Branch comes in on the right, unnoticed by most floaters. It drains about three square miles32 from the south. A small spring is said to feed it a few hundred yards up the hollow and another about two miles farther up, and whiskey, by the same account, was once made up the hollow. The name comes, by one account, from a large island31 the river used to make where the hollow comes in.

Federal maps called this stream Allen Branch until the 2011 corrections, which moved the name Island Branch down to it from the stream at Bee Hollow33 (Reach F; Chapter 18). By 1980 the local name had been written down for this stream with the story of the island34.

Cooley Hole and the ledge

Pool and bluff · right bank (bluff) · about miles 27.1 to 27.5 · Plate A9

The Cooleys once lived near the mouth of Island Branch, and the rocky hole below it is Cooley Hole. It used to be big and deep. Roy Cooley, the story goes, was cutting corn one day in the 1940s and went in to cool off, took cramps in his legs and drowned there. The bluff on the right below the mouth rises about 300 feet36, and what looks from the river like a cave in it is said to be only a rock ledge35.

Grandma Rocks, the Buffington Place and Black Bill Lynch Ford

Rocks, old farm and ford · right bank (rocks), left bank (farm) · about miles 27.5 to 28.4 · Plate A9

Below Cooley Hole the river runs north for about a mile through the Grandma Rocks Stretch, with the rocks on the right37. At its lower end, just above the sharp right turn at Fish Trap Hollow, Grandma Rocks is mapped as a bar on the right side of the channel38. Across the river from the rocks, the bluff on the left rises about 350 feet, the tallest face on the river39. The stretch is said to have been named by Henry Younger. Seines were dropped around its flat rocks to catch fish, and this “grandmaing” for fish, by the same account, supplied the community fish fries40 (Chapter 19). In 1977 a park folder picked out the deepening river after the sharp right turn through Grandma Rocks as a favorite fishing spot41.

On the left, inside the long bend from Flat Top Bluff to Fish Trap Hollow, lay the old Buffington Place, where a small spring supplied the house with water. Two fords carried roads to it, the Island Branch Ford above and the Black Bill Lynch Ford42 here, a little above the mouth of Fish Trap Hollow. The park has used the Buffington name for a camping place, apparently below Bay Creek, since at least 198143 (Places not yet placed).

Fish Trap Hollow and Fish Trap Hole

Hollow and pool · left bank · about mile 28.5 · Plate A9

After the long shallow run past Grandma Rocks the river turns sharply right44 at the mouth of Fish Trap Hollow, which comes down from the northwest on the left. The hollow is about a mile and a third long and drains nearly two square miles45. A small spring enters the river from the foot of a small bluff on the left, and John Martin is said to have run a sawmill46 at the mouth of the hollow.

The names probably recall the fish traps of pioneer days, when, by one account, they were common. Rocks and logs were laid in the river to stop the fish moving upstream, and the water was funneled over the swiftest spot. When someone wanted a mess of spring suckers and redhorse, they set a crate in the swift water above the obstruction. The fish swam over the obstruction into the crate and were trapped, and the crate was taken out and put in the bushes47 until it was needed again. Missouri’s first full game and fish law, the Walmsley Law of 1905, banned fish traps on most of the state’s waters from July through March, along with gill nets, gigging and trotlines48.

Fish Trap Hole lies below a big rock on the left. It is said to be one of the deepest spots on the whole river, and in winter, when the water turns crystal clear, its sandy bottom could be seen nearly twenty feet49 down. At low water it is about 8 feet deep today, among the deepest pools on the river50. An Eminence resident who has done park work knew Fish Trap Hole and Fish Trap Hollow by those names in 2026, and Boyd Branch and Rail Tree Hollow51 as well.

Boyd Branch and Joe Boyd Ford

Creek and ford · right bank · about miles 28.6 to 29.4 · Plate A9

Below Fish Trap Hole the river runs east, shallow and choppy, over a smooth bottom of solid rock. A boy is said to have drowned in the hole above the mouth of Boyd Branch in the 1800s and to be buried at the edge of the field52. Boyd Branch comes in on the right at mile 29.0 and drains about a square mile and a half53. By one account it held water knee deep for a quarter of a mile or so, and it runs water farther than that. It is named, by the same account, for the Boyds who owned the mill at Alley54 (Reach H).

Thornton “Fodder” Jones and Bill Dyer, the story goes, were riding home from a pie supper when their horse stopped near the Boyd house, below the mouth of the branch, at a white, ghostly figure in the road ahead. Imaginations ran wild for a time, and when they looked into it later the ghost turned out to be a big gander hung in the fence. Joe Boyd Ford55 crossed the river between Boyd Branch and Big Bend Hole.

Big Bend Hole and Rail Tree Hollow

Pool and hollow · right bank (hollow) · about miles 29.4 to 29.8 · Plate A9

Just above Rail Tree Hollow the river makes a big bend56 from east to north under a bluff on the right that rises about 240 feet57, and the pool in the bend is Big Bend Hole, about 8 feet deep at low water58. Rail Tree Hollow comes in from the southeast on the right at about mile 29.7. It is a short hollow draining about half a square mile59, and how it got its name has not been recorded. A second short hollow of the same size comes in on the left a little below, at about 29.860.

Buxton Hole and the Buxton farm

Pool and old farm · left bank (farm) · about mile 30.0 · Plate A9

Buxton Hole lies below Rail Tree Hollow, at the end of Buxton Lane, with the old Buxton farm on the left and a bluff of about 200 feet across the river on the right61. The story goes that Robert Powell moved onto the farm early in the 1860s, and that Lieutenant Boyd and the militia stopped at the house when Powell’s wife, Julianna, had just given birth to twin girls. The men carried the bed out into the yard with Julianna and the twins in it and burned the cabin. Neighbors took the mother and babies to the Union lines near Rolla, and the twins took pneumonia62 and died. In November 1863 Lieutenant John W. Boyd’s patrol, having come to the river by the Leatherwood trail, went ten miles down the Jacks Fork to the Widow McCormick’s63, and two other tellings64 of a Jacks Fork twins story are in Chapter 6.

William Buxton lived on the farm in the 1880s. In the winter of 1886, by one account, he gigged a ten-pound jack salmon65 near the farm (Chapter 19). Jack salmon was the Ozark name for the walleye66, a fish not collected in the Jacks Fork since 198067 (Chapter 16). In the Current, walleye spend the day in pools twelve feet deep or more, where boulders or sunken logs break up the bottom, and move into shallower water at night. Grown walleye usually weigh from half a pound to about eight pounds, though bigger ones68 turn up.

The last miles to Alley

Shallows and branch · about miles 30.0 to 31.3 · Plate A9

Below Buxton Hole the river runs north-northeast toward Alley through the widest and shallowest69 water of the stretch. An unnamed branch of a little more than half a square mile comes in on the left at about mile 31.370. In 1998 and 1999, about a mile and a quarter above Alley Spring, the river ran 5 to 25 meters wide, with pools more than 2 meters deep common between the riffles, and chambers71 set on its bed measured how much the riffles and pools produced (Chapter 16). On Highway 106, about three-quarters of a mile west of Alley Spring, a road cut shows the contact between the Gasconade Dolomite and the Roubidoux Formation72 above it.

Places not yet placed

Lower Bay Creek and Buffington’s. The park’s list of primitive campsites in 1981 ended “Bee Bluff to Bay Creek, Buffington’s,” and in 2022 the park named a Lower Bay Creek backcountry area and a Buffington primitive area, set after the Bay Creek campground and before Alley73, apparently in downstream order. Neither has been placed on the ground. The Buffington name presumably comes from the old Buffington Place74 inside the bend above Fish Trap Hollow.

Buxton Hollow. A map of 1980 brings Buxton Hollow down from the northwest toward Buxton Lane and the old Buxton farm75, on the left below Rail Tree Hollow. It is not on the federal maps76, and its stream has not been matched to a mapped channel.

Barton Bay77. The same map letters Barton Bay on the left in the last mile above Alley, one of the sloughs and bays78 that once lined this part of the river. Most of them had filled in by 1980.

Alley Hill. A photograph of about 1980 looks upriver from Alley Hill toward Island Branch79. The hill is probably the one west of Alley where Highway 106 comes down to the river.

The photographs above Alley. The channel photographed about 1925 and again in 1992, and the field buried in gravel in the aerial photograph of November 1990, are described only as upstream from Alley Spring80.

On to Reach H

Just below the last small branch on the left the river comes to the head of the Alley Spring Campground at about mile 31.3, where Reach H begins with Davis Ford, the campground’s river front and Bluff Hole above the Highway 106 bridge81. Rules for the river are in Part Six.