Ghost Towns of the Ozarks

Ghost towns are not all that uncommon and can be found in all fifty states and around the world. West of the Mississippi hundreds of towns sprang up in response to western expansion, gold strikes, water sources and railroads. Just as many disappeared seemingly overnight, left to decay and to be seen by only a few curious hikers or historians. An unseasonably warm January day and an opportunity to get off road in my FJ Cruiser led my wife and I to explore the ruins of two area ghost towns here in the Ozarks, Melva and Garber, Missouri.

There are striking similarities to these two abandoned towns. Both were rail communities. Both had a train station made from a converted rail car. Both bordered creeks, Turkey Creek in Melva and Roark Creek in Garber. One became famous for its inhabitants who were immortalized in literature, the other for unthinkable tragedy. Both are forever linked in Ozarks folklore.

Our first stop was Garber. A little web research provided us a map of the city as it stood in 1919, and some valuable research from the White River Valley Historical Society gave us some great historical background. You can read the fascinating story of Garber here http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/v4/n6/w71b.htm and here http://gchudleigh.com/garber.htm

The ruins of Garber are a nice hike from the Stonebridge golf course and development. Even with the aid of a satellite map we didn’t find it right away despite the fact that the winter season had denuded the trees. Only the old post office remains standing. Originally built in 1927 as a church it only held one religious service, the funeral of postmistress Ada Clodfelter. Ada was the proprietor of the general store that housed the original post office, When a mail clerk was caught stealing she phoned the authorities but before they could arrive he burned the store to the ground. Thus the new church became the new post office.

Garber became something of a tourist attraction after the publication of Harold Bell Wright’s wildly successful novel “The Shepherd of the Hills.” The characters of Old Matt and Aunt Molly were directly created based on the citizens of Garber. But Garber was a “flag stop” and not a regular rail destination unlike Branson and Hollister, and eventually the remote town began to fade away. Many folks say that the idea for the theme park Silver Dollar City came after Pete Herschend visited the deteriorating town in the 1950’s. The old post office itself has been used as a dump, probably by an enterprising bathroom redecorator judging from the number of bathtubs at the site.

Garber, Missouri post office

This shallow well (126ft) served the community of Garber.

One-time postmistress of Garber, MO

Garber was a few miles west of Branson, which was a very small town indeed before tourism took hold but still a major rail stop between Harrison, Arkansas and Springfield, Missouri. South of Branson on the railway was Hollister, then the tiny community of Melva. The town was populated by bridge workers for the railroad, loggers, orchard-tenders and those who worked in the numerous lead mines that dotted the area. There was a school, the Buell Hotel, a rail station (made from a re-purposed rail car as in Garber) and a Presbyterian missionary named Lucy Woods. A harrowing account of the tornado that destroyed the town can be found here http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/v1/N9/F63d.htm This is the best history of Melva that I have found and once again it was through the White River Valley Historical Society.

The home of Lucy Woods in Melva, MO March 1920

The Lucy Woods Home January 2014

The story goes that Mrs. Buell ran from the hotel to the home of Lucy Woods and together they took shelter inside the fireplace which undoubtedly saved their lives. The sturdy fireplace still stands today. The hillside above the creek and railroad tracks was wiped clean of everything save the foundations of some of the buildings. Photos show even the trees and vegetation were carried away. Today scrub oaks and pines have sprouted back up on the once-ravaged hill obscuring the footprint of the once-thriving community. 11 people died, 8 of them children, and there was little urge to rebuild the town. Most moved on to Hollister and Branson and as the lead mines closed the remaining survivors just drifted away.

We finished our exploration by driving the rugged ATV trails in our FJ Cruiser to the Half Moon Mine and Alf Bolin cave just a few short miles away on the same large parcel of land near the Branson Airport. The history of Alf Bolin and a trip to the Murder Rocks is fodder for a future blog.

Here’s an interesting feature the local NBC affiliate did on Melva last year http://www.ky3.com/news/local/Ghost-town-is-hidden-in-Ozark-Mountain-foothills/-/21048998/21281450/-/u2gcpv/-/index.html

Melva and Garber are but two forgotten communities with important historical significance here in the Ozarks. Know of other sites I might like to explore? Reply in the comments section of this blog and let me know, I’m always on the hunt for old schoolhouses and ghost towns.

Rural Schools of the Ozarks

On the property bordering my grandparent’s farm to the south stood a schoolhouse. It was called the Clay Hill school and it served the children in the rural Madry community from about 1890 until all the country schools of the area were consolidated with the school systems of Aurora and Jenkins around 1959. As a child Clay Hill was a mysterious and enticing place. In the 1970s most of the desks still remained as well as the chalkboards, a rusty teeter-totter and two outhouses. An abandoned Confederate cemetery stood just across the old school lane in a clump of trees. My sister and I used to try to frighten each other with stories of ghostly apparitions rising from the forgotten graves to devour trespassing children after dark.

My grandmother Mary Jane Haddock was renowned for her skills in the kitchen and for many years was the school’s cook. She received an allotment from the state every month and purchased enough food to feed the children. Some of the kids would not have enough money to pay for their lunches but she would always feed them anyway. In those days folks would always repay that debt. My mother who studied elementary education at Southwest Missouri State was a substitute teacher there in the late 1950’s. Both of her siblings attended the school for a time.

My sister Laura Hazelwood got interested in the cemetery while studying the civil war battles of Missouri while she attended Missouri Southern in Joplin and it rekindled my interest in the school. By this time in the late 1980s the building was in a sorry state. There had been an aborted renovation attempt at some point, then it was used to store hay. After I was married in 1996 I took my wife back there to see the school and time had decayed it even further. The roof was sagging, someone had made off with the bell. I never thought to photograph it until the owner of the property had already decided to raze the structure.

I studied on the loss of that old building and what that place had meant for generations of people who had attended there. I knew there were other old schools in the area. Elsey School had been demolished while I was in high school. Leann School in Jenkins stood close enough to Highway 39 to see when I passed. I started researching some of the schools online and discovered David Burton’s survey of Greene County rural schools. His work was an inspiration. Armed with a Nikon D5100 I barely knew how to use I decided to document as many schools as I could find in the rural Ozarks.

I started with the low-hanging fruit in my own neighborhood of Forsyth, Missouri in Taney County. I researched RootsWeb, the White River Historical Society, spoke to older citizens and learned a lot. I discovered that the Forsyth High School had posted some oral histories to YouTube about area schools as described by the elderly former students. I downloaded GPS coordinates, took a lot of wrong turns and saw a lot of the backwoods of Southwest Missouri that a lot of people don’t get to see. Finding an old school became like winning a jackpot! My searches for rural schools became an almost weekly event, one that I anticipated all week long.

I shot this one in Lawrence County

I tried to take an artistic view of the schools I photographed rather than a strict documentary format. I often shoot up to 150 frames from multiple angles and try to accentuate backgrounds and clouds or minute interior details. From those shots I whittle each school down to a few “special” shots and give them a cursory editing in iPhoto or Nikon ViewNX. Before I knew it I had about 30 good school shots from 6 counties in Missouri and 1 in Arkansas. I learned more about the early rural school system than I ever thought I’d know and what do you know? I can use that camera now.

Many of my photographs can be seen on my Pinterest board “One-Room Schoolhouses of the Ozarks” at this link:  http://www.pinterest.com/mondorob/one-room-shoolhouses-of-the-ozarks/  and others on my Flickr photo stream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mondorob/

Have an old schoolhouse that you know about in your neighborhood that you don’t see in these  photos? Respond to this blogpost with directions and I’ll add it to the collection. It feels good to document some Missouri history that may otherwise be forgotten.