Low Water to Steel Bridge

At Low Water the North Prong and the South Prong meet, and the Jacks Fork begins. For the next seven miles the river winds generally southeast in a valley cut into the plateau north of Mountain View, to the Highway 17 bridge, which Mountain View calls Steel Bridge. No state highway touches the river between the two bridges. County roads come down to it at a few places, and above the national riverways boundary both banks are private except the state’s South Prong Access1 at Low Water. Plate A3 shows the whole reach on one page, with an inset of the two crossings at Low Water.

The river here is small, quick and stony. Through this reach the river falls about 9 feet a mile, the steepest stretch of the main river2 (Chapter 2). It starts out in the sandy Roubidoux Formation and within about a mile has cut down into the dolomite beneath3 (Chapter 1). Below the long bends of the Big Bend the valley narrows, and tall bluffs on both sides give the last miles above the bridge the look of a canyon4. Less water is said to flow past Buck Hollow than upstream5. On August 14, 2006, the river near the old VFW campground carried 23.6 cubic feet a second, an apparent loss of about 5.5 cubic feet a second6 from what the two prongs together had carried that afternoon (Chapter 12).

The national riverways reach upstream above Highway 17. The park boundary crosses the channel about 4.2 miles below the junction, in the long bends a mile and a quarter above Ratliff Ford7. Below that line the Park Service lists Ratliff Ford among its fords8 (Chapter 8) and shares Barn Hollow Natural Area9 with the state (Chapter 11).

The reach holds some of the river’s best mussel water. In 2017–19 timed searches of the riverbed found no mussels, alive or dead, at five sites up the two prongs, and then 21 live ones a short way below the junction, 22 at Harlow Ford and 111 a little above Ratliff Ford, at the head of the richest stretch10 of the river, which runs down through the Jacks Fork Natural Area (Chapter 16). The man who knew the Hiker Hole, who lived at the VFW camp in the early 1990s, watched the holes from the camp up both prongs11 fill with gravel one after another (Chapter 15).

The miles in the headings are counted from the junction of the prongs along the surveyed channel. The Highway Y bridge and the South Prong Access lie a few hundred yards above mile 0, and the Highway 17 bridge is at mile 7.012. Left and right are as you face downstream.

Bend by bend

Low Water: the Highway Y bridge and South Prong Access

Bridge and access · South Prong, a few hundred yards above the junction · Plate A3 inset

Route Y crosses the South Prong a few hundred yards above the junction, and the Missouri Department of Conservation’s South Prong Access, a tract of about 3.3 acres13, lies beside the bridge. The bridge, the low bridge before it and the name14 Low Water are the subject of Chapters 8 and 18. A Mountain View resident who grew up on this part of the river and swam in it from the 1970s on named the hole at the Highway Y bridge as the one that has changed most and the one to warn people about15 (Chapter 19). The South Prong above the bridge is Reach B.

The low-water slab

County low-water crossing · across the junction · mile 0 · Plate A3 inset; Fig. 15

Jacks Fork Road, County Road 4670, runs from Route W at Arroll to Route Y16 and crosses the river a few hundred yards below the Highway Y bridge on a concrete low-water slab laid across the meeting of the prongs17 (Chapter 8). An earlier low-water bridge at the same place is said to have washed out more than once18. The crossing’s local names19 are in Chapter 18.

The Prongs

Junction of the North and South prongs · mile 0 · Plates A1 and A3

The North Prong arrives around a broad loop past the mouth of Buckhorn Hollow20. The South Prong comes in under the Highway Y bridge (Reaches A and B). The South Prong is the larger of the two, draining about 88 square miles against the North Prong’s 5921. People who grew up here call the junction the Forks or the Prongs22 (Chapter 18).

The farm in the loop between the prongs is said to have been homesteaded by Richard House, known as Rich House, who by the same account joined the Confederate army. The road coming off the hill crossed the North Prong at Rich House Ford and went on up the river. A graveyard on the hill above Rich House Spring is said to hold both settlers and Indians. Nobody is sure where all its graves lie, and the uncertainty has clouded the title to four acres23 of the field. Claims that the bottoms here and the bench across from Chimney Rock were Indian village sites24 are weighed in Chapter 3.

Beckelshymer Spring comes in near the junction. Charles Beckelshymer, a settler from Indiana before the Civil War, is said to have kept a shed beside it for drying ginseng and, with William Baskett, to have taken the Union side25. His wife, Rachel, was said to be a niece of the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes26. A short branch that comes in on the right a little below the junction, draining less than a square mile27, is probably the hollow known as Beckelshymer Hollow28.

Chimney Rock

Bluff and pinnacle · right bank · about mile 0.4 · Plate A3

A short way below the slab a broad cut climbs the hill on the right, the right-of-way of a former power line29. As the river rounds its first bend, Chimney Rock stands out on the right30: a bluff topped by a rock pinnacle, named for its chimney-like shape31. Its face rises about 180 feet32 above the water. It is on private land33. A Mountain View resident who grew up on this stretch remembered no stories about the rock but had climbed it34. A small spring flows out of the rocks on the left below the bend, and another runs through a slough into the river on the right about half a mile farther down35.

Chimney Rock Cave and Chimney Rock Spring

Cave and spring · right bank · about mile 0.8 · Plate A3

Chimney Rock Cave lies in the hill on the right, out of sight from the river36. Chimney Rock Spring takes its name from the cave, out of which it issues37, and reaches the river close by. Both are on private land.

Grassy Hollow, Bell Hollow and Grassy Hollow Hole

Hollows and pool · left bank · about mile 1.3 · Plate A3

Grassy Hollow comes in from the north, draining about six square miles, and its lower miles may stop running in dry weather38 and hold only pools. A small spring flows out of the rocks on the left above its mouth and another enters below39. Bell Hollow, also called Bob Bell Hollow, joins Grassy Hollow a little over 200 yards above the river, and both run water part of the year40. The name may come from the Bell family of the Bell School, District No. 2 of Carroll Township, which was named for a Warren Bell41 who lived near it; the 1948 topographic map prints a Bell Cemetery near the school42, about four miles north of the river. The pool below the mouth of Grassy Hollow is Grassy Hollow Hole. The next pool down is Ike Hole, with a good spring entering below it through a slough on the right43.

Harlow Ford and Cold Springs

Former ford, springs and mill site · about mile 2.2 · Plate A3

Harlow Ford crossed the river on a solid rock bottom44. The 1948 topographic map letters a road crossing here as Harlow Ford45, and a Mountain View native who now lives in Winona marked the ford on a map at the same place46. The old Cold Spring Road, a trail said to be older than settlement47, crossed at the ford (Chapter 8). In 1913 backers of a bridge at the Harlow Crossing48 went to court against the county’s contract for one at Buck Hollow and lost, and Harlow stayed a ford (Chapter 8).

Greenberry Harlow, said to be a son of Reuben Harlow49, one of the county’s earliest settlers50 (Chapter 5), is credited with a water-powered sawmill and gristmill at the ford after the Civil War. By one account the mill was rated at 12 horsepower and ran an upright saw, and in 1869 it sawed 100,000 feet of boards worth $1,000 and ground 600 bushels of cornmeal worth $300 and 6,000 pounds of flour worth $180. In 1879 it is said to have worked on a fall of four feet and ground 600 bushels of wheat and 8,000 of corn. Greenberry’s son Sam51 ran it in later years. A Harlow’s Mill post office ran from February 1875 to February 1876, with Greenberry Harlow its only postmaster52. He lived on a farm on the north side of the river below the Big Bend53. Sam Harlow’s granddaughter, the story goes, was the film actress Jean Harlow54. She was born Harlean Carpenter in Kansas City in 1911 and took her mother’s name, Jean Harlow, for the screen, and her mother’s father was a Samuel D. Harlow, a real-estate agent in Kansas City, Kansas55; whether he was Greenberry’s son Sam has not been traced56. The Harlow School and the Harlow Cemetery57 are on the ridge to the south, where the Harlows and other local families are buried.

A small spring comes out on the right a little above the ford, from under a rock with a tree growing on top of it. Below the ford a spring branch enters the first pool, Cold Springs Hole. A short way up the branch the Cold Springs, two springs reputed to have been very cold, seep up through the valley floor, and the branch keeps a good flow up its narrow hollow to a source that comes out of the rocks. The springs are on the left bank. On the ridge beside the old road the Cold Springs Cemetery holds thirty or forty graves among old cedars, many of them marked with stones; the Roark58 family is its main family, and the 1948 topographic map prints it as Cold Spring Cemetery59.

Landers Hole and the Big Bend

Pools and bend · about miles 3.4 to 4.5 · Plate A3

Below Cold Springs Hole a spring-fed slough comes in, and the next long pool is Landers Hole. Then the river begins its longest bends. Between Harlow Ford and the mouth of Coon Hollow it runs nearly three miles to gain about a mile and a quarter61, and somewhere in these bends it crosses into the national riverways.

The pools of the bends carry old names whose places are not fixed. The crossing above Tune Hole was Tune Ford. The Big Bend held five big pools, from Tune Hole at its head to Rock-in-the-Hole at its foot, and four small springs on its south side, two of them beside a large patch of scouring rush. A Mountain View resident who grew up on this stretch had heard the names Big Bend and Tune Hole62. A big spring a fair distance up the hollow on the Big Bend is said to have been dammed in early times for a gristmill60.

The Stoops mill is said to have stood in this stretch, near the later VFW camp. By the same account it was a water-powered sawmill with an upright, hand-forged saw that cut lumber and ties and was working in the 1850s. It was put back to work in 1876 as a gristmill and sawmill and closed in 1880, when its millstones went upriver to another mill. It is credited to Joseph Stoops, a blacksmith, younger brother of Hugh Stoops, a circuit rider from Pennsylvania63 (Chapter 5).

The VFW campground and the Blue Hole

Former camp and pool · about miles 4.3 to 4.8 · Plate A3

A Veterans of Foreign Wars camp stood on the river below the Big Bend from at least the 1970s into the 1990s, probably on the right bank along the run below Rock-in-the-Hole, about miles 4.3 to 4.766. On July 9, 197464, the Geological Survey took a single water sample at a point it called “Jacks Fork above VFW Campground,” at about mile 4.367, and in August 2006 its crews measured the river near the campground65 (Chapter 12). Who ran the camp and when it opened have not been traced. The man who knew the Hiker Hole lived at the camp in the early 1990s68. Floods, he said, now knocked out the timber at the lower ends of the big holes: “I can tell you in particular the big Blue Hole down here which used to have a lot of timber, the VFW campground used to have a lot of timber on it.”

The stretch past the VFW campground ends at the Blue Hole, by one account the deepest hole on the upper Jacks Fork and the same pool as Gar Hole, with a spring entering on its left from a crevice in the rock. It lies at the bend a short way above Coon Hollow69, at about mile 4.870, where the river is shallow at low water today71. Other memories put the names elsewhere. One woman wrote “Gar Hole near Y highway” among words an outsider might not know, though she was not sure where the hole was72 (Chapter 18). A resident who came to Mountain View from Oklahoma in 1979 marked a Blue Hole a little below Highway 17 and a Gar Hole near the mouth of Belew Hollow73 (Reach D). How the two names drifted is told in Chapter 18.

Coon Hollow and Coon Hollow Spring

Hollow and spring · left bank · about mile 5.1 · Plate A3

A good spring enters the river above the mouth of Coon Hollow, which comes in from the north, draining nearly six square miles. Its lower miles may stop running75 in dry weather. The hollow is rough, rocky and snaky. About half a mile up it is Coon Hollow Spring, a large spring with pools deeper than a person’s head, whose water sinks into the gravel74 before it reaches the river. The hollow is said to take its name from a renegade band of Shawnee, the Coon Klan76, who camped a short way above the spring and made trouble for the early settlers. The Shawnee on the Jacks Fork are the subject of Chapter 4.

White Bluff and Gobblers Knob

Bluff and hill · left bank · about mile 5.3 · Plate A3

Below Coon Hollow the river runs along White Bluff, with a small, noisy spring at its upper end. The bluff stands about 170 feet77 above the water, and Gobblers Knob rises above it. A small rock overhang on the knob carries a buried-treasure story: in the years when Spain owned Louisiana, the story goes, a party carrying silver from Potosi to Santa Fe ran into trouble with the Osage and buried the money on Gobblers Knob. Other treasure stories78 of the river are in Chapter 13.

Ratliff Ford

Ford and cabins · about mile 5.5 · Plate A3

Ratliff Ford, also called Morley Ford79, is the old Radcliff ford, the crossing nearest Mountain View in the 1920s. Its land deal of 1928 and the drift of its spelling from Radcliff to Ratcliff, Ratliff and Rat Cliff80 are told in Chapter 8, and the names in Chapter 18. County Road 466681 comes down to the river at the bend here.

A camp for girls from the Kansas City area is said to have stood on the right bank near the ford until the late 1920s, with a footbridge across the river; pilings of the bridge could still be seen in the chute below in 1980. A spring enters on the right above the pilings. On the hillside on the right bank near the ford the Mountain View Health and Recreation Club kept several old cabins around 1980, privately owned and run82, probably those of the outing club that Mountain View business and professional men organized at the ford in 192883 (Chapter 9). A Howell County columnist’s family, when not camping at Alley, swam at the ford84 (Chapter 19). From 1991 to 1998 state biologists sampled a stretch of river at the ford every year for crayfish85 (Chapter 16).

Barn Hollow and Barn Hollow Natural Area

Hollow and natural area · right bank · about mile 5.7 · Plate A3

Barn Hollow is the largest side valley in the reach. It drains about fourteen square miles and runs about nine miles from its head in northern Howell County86 to the river in Texas County, and for most of its length it may stop running87 in dry weather. Near its lower end the creek has cut a canyon through dolomite, with vertical bluffs up to a hundred feet high, a deeply entrenched and meandering course, and a clear stream of small deep pools, short riffles and beaver ponds. Forked aster, a plant of the north, grows along it. Julian Steyermark, who later wrote the standard flora of the state91, worked the canyon on August 17 and 18, 1934, and again in May 1935, and took showy lady’s-slipper from the moist bluffs at its foot and American barberry from the edge of a precipice along the river between the hollow and Highway 1790. Louisiana waterthrushes live along the water, eastern phoebes nest on the bluffs, and the ringed salamander, found only in the Ozarks, lives there along with slimy and cave salamanders, southern leopard and pickerel frogs and Blanchard’s cricket frogs (Chapter 16). The ringed salamander spends most of the year underground in the woods. On rainy nights in autumn, mostly in September and October, the adults travel to fishless woodland ponds to lay their eggs, and the larvae stay in the water through the winter, six to eight months or more92, before they change and leave. The Conservation Department’s land at the hollow holds two small fishless ponds, about an acre of water93 between them. Small caves and dolomite boulders line the valley slopes.

Barn Hollow Natural Area protects 190 acres of the canyon. It was designated on May 27, 1980, the same day as the Jacks Fork Natural Area89 downstream, and the Conservation Department and the Park Service own it together (Chapter 11). The Conservation Department bought its land in the hollow in 1979. It named 115 acres a natural area the next year and added 30 more in 2007, and the Park Service owns the 45 acres beside them94. A half-mile trail leads to an overlook above the hollow. The land directly north of it, now the Conservation Department’s, was the farmstead where Sue Hubbell kept bees and wrote A Country Year88: Living the Questions (1986). She came there in 1972 with her first husband, to a farm of ninety acres. After the marriage ended in the early 1980s she was left with about 300 hives and a struggling honey business, which she kept going by writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and then the New York Times. She died in Maine in 201895.

Gill Branch, lettered on Plate A3, flows into Barn Hollow and carries the name of Samuel K. Gill, a Union private who settled there about 187296. The hollow was also called Winningham Hollow, for Isaac Winningham, who homesteaded 160 acres there in 1869. Its own name comes either from a farm of the Civil War years with several log barns or from “barren”97 (Chapter 18). The history of its spring and its school98 is in Chapters 5 and 18. Bear Cave, one of the larger caves of the upper river, and Bat Cave99 are in the Barn Hollow country (Chapter 13).

Panther Hollow and Panther Hollow Shoal

Hollow and riffle · right bank · about mile 6.2 · Plate A3

Panther Hollow, the last named hollow above Highway 17, heads in Howell County and drains a little over four square miles101. It is said to have been named for the panthers100 that lived there in the early days (Chapter 18). Mountain lions, the panthers of the old accounts, were all but wiped out in Missouri in the nineteenth century. The last native one known was killed in 1927, and none was confirmed in the state again until December 1994, when raccoon hunters shot one near Peck Ranch in Carter County102. A spring enters the river nearby from a dripping bluff. The riffle beside the mouth of the hollow is Panther Hollow Shoal104, where rough rocks are said to block a boat’s way at low water103. A Mountain View resident who grew up on this stretch named the shoal at Panther Hollow as the hardest spot on the river to get through105.

River Hill and the Old Quarry

Highway hill and quarry · at the Highway 17 bridge · about miles 6.7 to 7.0 · Plate A3

Highway 17 comes down to the river on River Hill106, a name that no map prints and that probably belongs to the descent on the Mountain View side107 (Chapter 18). The steep Highway 17 grades at Buck Hollow are said to have caused a number of accidents and deaths. The Old Quarry lies on the right bank just above the bridge109, where Vernon Campbell is said to have run a lime quarry and hauled out limestone until the mid-1950s108.

Places not yet placed

Hellum Spring. The good spring in Barn Hollow that changed names with its owners, from Hellum to Rushing to McCollouck, and had lost its names by 1937110 (Chapter 18). Where it is has not been found.

The Hiker Hole. The large hole, deep throughout with a bluff on one side, on the farm the man who knew it bought in 1960 (Chapter 15). By the early 1990s half of it had filled111 with gravel. He lived at the VFW camp, and the hole may have been near it.

The Big Bend mill and the Stoops mill. The places of the dam and gristmill on the spring up the Big Bend’s hollow, and of the Stoops mill112 near the VFW camp, have not been fixed on the ground.

On to Steel Bridge

Below the Old Quarry the river reaches the Highway 17 bridge at Buck Hollow, mile 7.0113. The pool at the bridge, lettered Buck Hollow Bluff Hole on Plate A3, has long been a favorite swimming and picnic place for families from Summersville and Mountain View, and at least three people114 are said to have drowned in it. It is probably the hole Mountain View calls the Steel Bridge hole115. The bridge, the landing and the gauge are in Reach D (Plate A4), and the hole’s changes are in Chapter 15. Rules for the river116 are in Part Six.