Handcrafted at silver dollar city: Home of American craftsmanship

Payton, Crystal

History

Lens & Pen Press

Two Irish-American classics with extensive historical commentary by Crystal Payton, this is the companion volume to the Paytons' award winning Mystery of the Irish Wilderness. John Joseph Hogan, first bishop of Kansas City, was a pioneer priest and gifted writer. Now this definitive edition brings his two memoirs. edited by Crystal Payton, together with biographical and historical information to provide a compelling image of an important figure in Missouri history and the development of the Catholic church west of the Mississippi. On the Mission recounts the young missionary's eleven years on the frontier of Missouri, through the Civil War. his first person account of train wrecks, federal and confederate attacks on rail lines and cities, travel by handcar, horseback and riverboat, and his arrest for violation of the Loyalty Test Oath following the War. In this volume, he creates a lively and personal picture of rugged frontier life, historical personalities and events. Here one finds the only first-hand account of his Irish Wilderness colony in the pre-Civil War Missouri Ozarks. On the Mission ends in 1868 when he first becomes a bishop, but Payton's research follows him through his administration of two dioceses to his death in 1913. Few recollections of an Irish country childhood are as beautifully told as his memoir, Fifty Years Ago. Written in 1898, Hogan looks back on his early childhood in County Limerick during the 1830s and '40s where momentous historical events contrast with a lively rural upbringing and rigorous education. He gives a detailed account of his emigration from Ireland to America in 1848 and arrival in St. Louis and acceptance into Carondelet seminary. A talented realist writer, Hogan's accounts of life in Ireland and America are keenly observed, poignant and at times delightfully humorous.  Raymond J. Boland, Bishop Emeritus of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese and a native of Ireland, wrote the introduction.

On the Mission In Missouri & Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir

John Joseph Hogan

Crystal Payton

Damming Ozark rivers has stopped (at least for now), but are we still changing them? A new 352-page all-color book looks at the effect of development on a famous float stream and our efforts to protect riverine resources. Once the James River was the premier float-fishing stream of the Ozarks. From Galena, Missouri, sportsmen and sportswomen embarked on guided floats down the James and the White Rivers to Branson. Gravel bars they camped on are now 150 feet under the waters of Table Rock Lake. Though truncated and transformed by development, Leland and Crystal Payton found the James worthy of a book with more than 450 contemporary and vintage photographs. 
 The Paytons spent five years driving gravelly back roads and two-lane blacktops searching out and photographing the crumbling foundations of old water mills, springs, caves, and antique bridges. They floated the James and explored its tributaries. Research revealed a forgotten history of failed attempts to protect Ozark waterways, which culminated in the growth of volunteer organizations and governmental agencies with river conservation agendas. The impact of federal legislation like NEPA and the Clean Water Act are covered as well as changing patterns of river recreation. Many of the problems and solutions identified in this book are applicable to other Ozark rivers. 
 Railroads, highways, dam projects, tourism, the growth of towns, agriculture, industry, media and art, political will and cultural values all interact. The river we see today is an outcome of all these forces. Even though transformed and changing, the watershed of the James Fork of the White is still in many places scenic and beautiful; where it lacks aesthetics, it is intriguing. After years of research, a mystery remains. The Paytons never found an explanation that holds water why this river is called the James.

James Fork Of The White: Transformation Of An Ozark River

Leland Payton

Only fragments remain of the native prairies of the upper Osage watershed. It has been two centuries since the warrior culture for which the river is named, and who maintained the buffalo grasslands by fire, was pushed west by displaced eastern tribes and land-hungry Americans. Two high dams have turned the main stem of the river into huge reservoirs. Leland and Crystal Payton find the tale of these transformations compelling, but turbulent. In journals of soldiers, explorers, and missionaries and in old newspaper accounts and court documents, they discovered a cast of passionate and sometimes doomed personalities. 
 DAMMING THE OSAGE is also a record of banking fraud, slush funds, and governmental misdeeds. Romanticism's penchant for hyperbole, Leland and Crystal Payton found, was not confined to mythic stories of Osage Indians. Brochures put out by the US Army Corps of Engineers laud the sterile, banal landscape created by dams as a natural paradise.
 If changed by development, the authors found the present Osage valley landscape expressive. Illustrated with hundreds of color photographs, period maps, and vintage images, this book tells the dramatic saga of human ambition pitted against natural limitations and forces beyond man's control.
 Wars have been fought over water since ancient times. DAMMING THE OSAGE chronicles efforts to develop the Osage River and the forces, both natural and political, that opposed its improvement. Before the Louisiana Purchase, the French and Spanish were thwarted in their effort to colonize the region by the powerful Osage Indian tribe. When the Americans arrived, efforts through engineering to make the river useful began, ultimately leading to a series of massive dams and reservoirs. This new 304 page book with 435 color illustrations weaves together tumultuous stories of centuries of conflict over how to exploit this important resource. Much of ecological, scientific and cultural value has been lost in the process.

Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir

Lovers leap worldwide. In America the leaping was usually done by a love-shattered Indian woman. There are hundreds of dramatic cliffs where a dusky maiden is said to have plunged to her death after her father, the chief, demanded she wed an unloved brave. Thousands of poems, stories, and newspaper accounts chronicle these dolorous events. Millions of postcards and souvenirs have been manufactured picturing the often-spectacular bluffs where those princesses leaped. Folklorists have largely ignored these legends. Understandably so they are fakelore and do not resemble Indian traditions. Mark Twain found Lover s Leaps perversely amusing, and so do the Paytons.

Lover's Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco