Eminence to the Mouth

Below Storys Creek the Jacks Fork swings south around a tight loop past Button Rock and the Circle B campground and comes to the Highway 19 bridge at Eminence, the one town on its banks2. It runs southeast past the town, turns north at about mile 39.5 under a string of named pools, bends east at the Hole-in-the-Wall and winds east-northeast for three miles past Kell Bluff, Powell Spring and Jones Bluff. Shawnee Creek and Little Shawnee Creek come in from the right, the last creeks of any size. Below them the river turns north again, swings east along the Garr Town Stretch and meets the Current at the Junction1. Through this reach the river falls about 5 feet a mile4. Eminence to the mouth is the second half of the lower river’s standard float, a little under eight miles3 (Chapter 20).

By here the river carries Alley Spring and Mahans Creek, and it grows little in its last eight miles. In the dry week of August 2006 it was carrying 133 cubic feet of water a second at Eminence and 138 at the mouth, and Shawnee Creek was adding a little under five5 (Chapter 12). From a couple of miles above Eminence to the Current the river runs in stretches on the Potosi Dolomite, the oldest rock in its bed. The town stands inside the western part of the Eminence caldera, a volcano that collapsed nearly a billion and a half years ago, and near the mouth knobs of its welded tuff rise within a few hundred yards of the river6 (Chapter 1).

The wide terraces at the creek mouths drew people early. A burned house of the Mississippian period was excavated on a terrace of the lower river, and the bench above the confluence has given up tools from the earliest times7 on the river (Chapter 3). By 1840 a few settlers lived at the mouth, and the Chiltons and their neighbors farmed the terraces from Shawnee and Little Shawnee creeks up to the site of the town8 (Chapter 5). Near Eminence the river runs outside the national riverways, in the gap the law of 19649 left around the town, and below it the park resumes (Chapter 10). The trail rides, the bacteria studies of the lower river and the Shawnee Creek band of wild horses10 all belong to this stretch (Chapters 11 and 17).

The miles in the headings are counted from the junction of the prongs along the surveyed channel. The Highway 19 bridge is at mile 38.55, Lick Log Hollow at 40.9, Shawnee Creek at 43.5, Little Shawnee Creek at 43.9 and the meeting with the Current at 46.2111. Left and right are as you face downstream. The river turns often here. The left bank is the north bank where it runs east, and the west bank where it runs north, from about 39.5 to 40.8, from 44.0 to 44.7 and in the last half mile12.

Bend by bend

Button Rock and Circle B

Bluff and pool · left bank (bluff) · about mile 38.0 · Plate A12

Below Storys Creek the next hole is Button Rock, deep, and long a favorite swimming hole of local people. The pool lies at about mile 38.0, where the river turns from east to south13 toward the town, and the rock is on the left, on the outside of the bend, where the bluff rises about 90 feet14, across the river from the Circle B campground inside the loop. In town it was the boys’ hole, known to old-timers as the Naked Hole17 (Chapter 19), and its spelling is still unsettled, Button or Buttin18 (Chapter 18). By one account William Jones caught a large otter19 there in the winter of 1886 (the river’s otters are in Chapter 16), and a car once rolled across the road on the hill above the bluff and plunged down to the edge of the water; the woman driving it survived. The federal maps give the name Buttin Rock to a cliff about 110 feet high16 on the right bank about a quarter mile farther down15, on the campground’s side of the river. The state’s Buttin Rock Access, about ten acres20 bought in 1995 and leased to the city of Eminence in 2012, carries the rock’s name.

Asked whether the river had moved between Button Rock and Eminence over the years, an Eminence resident who has done park work answered, “A little wandering from the floods.”21

Steel Bridge Hole, Eminence Bluff and the bridge

Pool, bluff and bridge · right bank (bluff) · about miles 38.3 to 38.55 · Plate A12

Below Button Rock the river runs southeast to the Highway 19 bridge at mile 38.55. The pool above the bridge is Steel Bridge Hole, named for the town’s first bridge, and Eminence Bluff stands beside it on the town side. It is a different pool from the Steel Bridge hole at Highway 1722, far upriver (Reach C). When the first settlers came, by one account, the river divided here, and a smaller channel ran along the hillside and rejoined the main one a mile below.

By the same account the Eminence Ford was often impassable in high water, and in the summer of 1916 the town set out to get a bridge. Local people gave $3,000, the county court matched it, and the Canton Bridge Company finished a narrow steel-framed bridge in March 1917. It was soon too narrow. Work on a concrete bridge for the new Highway 19 began in February 1934, and it was finished in 193523. The present bridge dates from 200224 (Chapter 8).

The flood of March 1904, by one account the largest anyone remembered, crested at Eminence at 27 feet. In April 2017 the river rose to 27.72, more than a foot and a half above the level at which water stands on the deck of the bridge25 (Chapter 14).

The Eminence riverfront

Town, landings, chute and ford · right bank (town) · about miles 38.55 to 38.9 · Plate A12

Eminence lies on the right bank, the second county seat of that name, moved here from the Current after the war26 (Chapter 5). Below the bridge the river runs southeast past the town through Hawkins Chute, named by one account, like Orchard Bay, Kell Bluff and McCabe Hollow below it, for people who once lived along the river. On the right the state keeps a one-acre public landing by agreement with its owner, the Joshua T. Chilton Memorial Landing, near the junction of Highways 19 and 10627, and floaters long took out at the Lions Ball Park28, a quarter mile below the bridge (Chapter 20). In 2010 the state’s Conservation Commission approved a contract to build an access at the Eminence city park, with a boat ramp, a canoe ramp, parking and restrooms, and the city was to clear away the park’s bleachers and cook shack29. The Chilton landing is probably that access, on the old ball park’s ground30.

From Eminence the guides of the Bales Boating Company took their johnboat parties down the Jacks Fork and the Current from 192831 (Chapter 9), and by one account the company had a large boat ramp on the far side of the river. A generation of Eminence children learned to swim in the river from Luther Rowlett, who called himself a “Retriever”32 (Chapter 19). The Cross-Country Trail Ride has camped on private land along the river in the gap around the town since 198133 (Chapter 11).

A creek of about two square miles comes in on the right at about mile 38.934, probably the Town Branch that a map of 1980 runs north through the west side of town35 to the river. The Eminence Ford crossed below the ball park. On a low hill above the river on the town side lies the Old Eminence Cemetery, on ground Daniel Dye gave in 1873, where by one account two-year-old Cora Dye was the first36 burial. Cora Bell Dye lived from August 21, 1871, to September 21, 1873, and Daniel E. Dye, her father by one family record, died in 188437. In the winter of 187638, by one account, James Chilton, a son of Joshua Chilton, and Ezekial Miller tried to cross the ford in high water. Chilton’s horse crossed easily. Miller’s threw him into the river, and he was swept downstream and drowned.

Across the river from the old ford lies the Chilton Cemetery, well kept and still in use39 in 1980. Joshua Chilton’s farm lay across and down the river, by one account (Chapter 6), and in 1939 people remembered a vanished village called Chiltonsville40, named for him, across the river from the town.

Old River Bay and the turn north

Pools and campground · right bank (campground) · about miles 39.2 to 39.7 · Plate A13

Below the town the river runs east, and at about mile 39.5 it turns north. At the turn a map of 1980 letters Old River Bay41. The Jacks Fork Campground lies on the right42 here, the old Pickin’ and Grinnin’, a favorite riverside hangout of Eminence young people in the late 1990s43 (Chapter 19). Beside the campground a small creek of a little over half a square mile comes in on the right at about mile 39.444. Leaning Sycamore Hole comes next, about 7 feet deep at low water, and High Bank Hole below it, about 545. The leaning sycamore that named the upper hole was a stump by 1980.

Orchard Bay, the Coppermine hollows and Cut Bank Hole

Bay, hollows and pool · about miles 39.9 to 40.6 · Plate A13

The river runs north for about a mile and a quarter46. Orchard Bay lies on the right47 at about mile 40.0, where a short hollow of about three-quarters of a square mile48 comes in from the southeast. Two hollows here carry the name Coppermine. By one account the one on the east bank runs toward Coppermine Flats and the old Slater diggings and the one on the west bank toward the Casey Mine. The federal maps give the name to the western one, a short valley of less than half a square mile that comes in on the left at about mile 40.449. By the same account it was also called Council Hollow, said to be where the Shawnee held their councils (Chapter 4), and in later years a man named Gates ran a sawmill in it. The copper50 that named both hollows is told in Chapter 5.

A map of 1980 letters Falls51 a little below Orchard Bay, and below that lies Cut Bank Hole, a long pool about 4 feet deep at low water52, with a high yellow clay bank on the right. The crossing just above Lick Log Hollow, with its big gravel bar, is a trail-ride crossing where boaters and swimmers stop to picnic. In the bacteria studies of 2000 to 2004 it lay outside the park boundary, and as many as 500 horses an hour53 crossed there on ride days (Chapter 17).

Lick Log Hollow and the Hole-in-the-Wall

Hollow, bluff and pool · left bank · about miles 40.9 to 41.1 · Plate A13

Lick Log Hollow comes in on the left at about mile 40.9, at the top of the bend where the river turns from north to southeast55. It drains about three-quarters of a square mile54 and is said to be named for an early deer lick. By one account water runs in it, and at one point it flows through a set of shut-ins in granite rock, and Slater’s miners took some copper out of its upper part (Chapter 5). The Hole-in-the-Wall is the bluff and pool at its mouth, on the outside of the bend56. The bluff rises about 90 feet just below the mouth57, and an old photograph58 shows it standing over still water. The old Barnesville Road ran down the river past it. An Eminence resident who has done park work placed the Hole-in-the-Wall at the mouth of the hollow59.

McCabe Hollow and Kell Bluff

Hollow and bluff · left bank · about miles 41.1 to 41.3 · Plate A13

A quarter mile below, McCabe Hollow comes in from the north, a valley of about two-thirds of a square mile60. A map of 1980 calls the hollow at this place Kell Hollow61 and gives the name Jim McCabe Hollow to the hollow at Powell Spring62, a mile and a half downstream. Kell Bluff stands on the left a little below the Hole-in-the-Wall63, with the old Barnesville Road between it and the river64, probably just below the mouth of the hollow at about mile 41.2, where the river swings from south-southeast to east-southeast.

Turkey Pen Hollow, Bald Knob Hollow and the Ferd Powell Stretch

Shoal, hollows, stretch and pool · about miles 41.6 to 42.4 · Plate A13

Below Kell Bluff the river runs southeast for half a mile and turns northeast65. A rough shoal, with rounded dolomite bedrock jutting up through the water, marks the stretch above Turkey Pen Hollow, which comes in on the right at about mile 41.766 with a good spring seeping out of its mouth. The hollow is said to take its name from a turkey pen, a box trap of rails baited with corn, with a trench dug under one side. The turkeys walked in through the trench and tripped a trigger tied to a door.

Bald Knob Hollow comes in on the left at about mile 42.2, a short hollow of about half a square mile67 with a low bluff at its mouth. A map of 1980 marks a spring there68, and whiskey is said to have been made in the hollow. The Ferd Powell Stretch runs along the left bank here, with the old river road between it and the bluff. Below it lies Andy P. Bales Hole, deep by one account of 1980, with a big rock at its lower end. Andy P. Bales was probably Andrew Powell Bales, of the Eminence family of David L. Bales and the Bales Boating Company69 (Chapter 9).

Powell Spring

Spring and ford · left bank · about mile 42.6 · Plate A13

Powell Spring comes out at the mouth of a short hollow on the left at about mile 42.670. It was once the Andy Chilton Spring, and the old Barnesville Road72 forded the river here. By one account Alex Chilton killed two Union soldiers near the spring during the war, and on March 25, 1879, his uncle Andy Chilton gunned him down at the same spot. Faced with having killed a local hero, Andy Chilton had to leave the country, and he settled in Whitney, Texas71. He was probably not the Alexander Chilton killed on the Rolla road in 186273 (Chapter 6).

A Shannon County man remembered walking with his grandfather, as a boy of eight or nine, down to the mouth of Big Shawnee and “back up Jack’s Fork about a mile to Powell Springs,” where they set sycamore poles74 along the bank and slept beside them all night (Chapter 19). Someone who grew up in Eminence lists “Powell Springs (River split)”75 among the river’s names that outsiders might not know.

Jones Bluff

Bluff and pool · left bank · about miles 42.7 to 43.2 · Plate A13

Below Powell Spring lies Jones Bluff Hole, under Jones Bluff on the left, which rises about 110 feet77. It is named for Henry Clay Jones (1845–191679), who married Susan Chilton, Joshua Chilton’s daughter. A small spring flows out at the river’s edge along the bluff. An old photograph shows the hole in winter76, a long sheet of water under a wooded bluff. Below the bluff the river runs southeast for the last quarter mile78 to Shawnee Creek.

Shawnee Creek

Creek · right bank · mile 43.5 · Plate A13

Shawnee Creek, also called Big Shawnee, comes in from the south at mile 43.5. It is the largest creek on the lower river, draining about twenty square miles, and runs about ten miles north82 to the river, all year in about its lower eight and a half. Its upper course comes down Black Valley and South Hollow80. Hay Hollow, its largest branch, was in 1939 a valley “from which grass is cut for hay”83 (Chapter 18).

The two Shawnee creeks carry the name of the Shawnee who were in this country early in the nineteenth century84 (Chapter 4). By one account a band of them lived on Shawnee Field, the bottom between the two creeks, and the creeks’ names are the only trace of their stay. By 1840 a Colonel Thomas Chilton farmed at the mouth of this one (Chapter 5), and Joseph Slater’s cabin and copper furnace85 stood up the creek.

Up the creek, by one account, George N. Deatherage86, known as Rumsey, ran a mill built by the millwright John C. McCaskill that was better known for its poker game and corn liquor than for the wheat and corn it ground. In the tie-cutting days there was a tie yard at its mouth. The story is told that after the war a farmer found the bones of two men killed on the creek, outlaws or Union soldiers. Nelson Chilton, Joshua Chilton’s son, is said to have escaped the Federals with a wounded arm in 186487 and to have been killed later, with a kinsman, when they met a patrol on the road up Big Shawnee81 (Chapter 6).

At the mouth the park keeps the Shawnee Creek campground, a backcountry camp with a staging area88 for riders (Chapter 11). Visitors there often meet the Shawnee Creek band89 of wild horses, which ranges along the lower river toward Two Rivers (Chapter 11). A water-quality station on the river above the creek’s mouth has been sampled since 197390 (Chapter 17).

Little Shawnee Creek and Fursman Spring

Creek, spring and mill sites · right bank · about miles 43.9 to 44.0 · Plate A13

Little Shawnee Creek comes in from the south at about mile 43.9, less than half a mile below92 Shawnee Creek. It drains about nine and a half square miles down Slick Rock, Despain and Odell hollows91 and runs about six miles, all year in nearly four93 miles of it. In 1939 it was said to be “named for the Indians who lived along the banks.” By one account Thomas Dent94, from North Carolina by way of Tennessee, moved to a farm near the mouth after the Civil War and built a small water-powered gristmill on the creek, and his son Hiram ran it until the early 1900s. A flour mill of Hiram Dent’s was on the creek in 1901. By 1980 no sign of it was left.

About three miles up are Betheny Chapel and its cemetery, the chapel named for Bethenia Hawkins Adair, the wife of Henry Lee Adair, who settled on the creek in the 1840s. The cemetery began as the Adair family’s burying ground and by 1980 held more than 250 graves. The Little Shawnee School95 stood about a mile and a half up the creek, and a post office called Shawnee served the creek from 1891 to 191896 (Chapter 5). By one account John Chilton, taken by a Union patrol, was brought home to Little Shawnee, allowed to see his family and then shot.

On the right below the mouth of Little Shawnee, back from the river97, Fursman Spring flows from under a small bluff and runs into a small lake down its ravine. By one account the Fursmans lived there in the Depression. A map drawn from the federal surveyors’ notes of 1821 and 1840 shows a mill beside a spring near the mouth of Little Shawnee98, probably the mill later called the Fursman Spring Mill99 (Chapter 5), and at one time a sawmill stood up the hollow from the spring. By one account Sam West built a new cabin near the spring in 1861. When riders came looking for him during the war, he hid under the bed and then fired on them, and they killed his father, John West, and mortally wounded his wife (Chapter 6).

Fursman Hole and the run north

Pool and bluff · right bank (bluff) · about miles 44.0 to 44.6 · Plate A13

Below Little Shawnee the river turns north for about two-thirds of a mile100. Fursman Hole, about 5 feet deep at low water102, lies just below the creek mouth next to a bluff on the right that rises about 80 feet101. An unnamed hollow of about half a square mile comes in on the left at about mile 44.3103.

The Garr Town Stretch

Stretch and spring · about miles 44.8 to 45.4 · Plate A13

At about mile 44.8 the river swings east104 along the Garr Town Stretch, also written Gar Town105, under a bluff on the left at about mile 45106 that rises about 160 feet, the tallest face on the river below Alley107. The stretch is said to be named for the gar that once stayed along it in numbers, and a good spring comes out of a small hollow above it. The gar most likely here is the longnose, the most widespread gar in Missouri and the commonest gar of clear Ozark streams. It keeps to the larger, deeper pools and slow backwaters, often basks near the surface and commonly grows to about three feet, and from early May to mid-June it moves onto shallow gravelly riffles108 to spawn. By one account the wife of Doss Chilton, who lived on the ridge between the Current and the Jacks Fork, killed with a club a mountain lion her dogs had attacked, and killed a deer by rolling a large rock onto it from a bluff. The last known native mountain lion in Missouri was killed in the Bootheel in 1927109.

George Fry Hole

Pool and spring · right bank (bluff) · about miles 45.8 to 46.0 · Plate A13

Below the Garr Town Stretch the river turns northeast and then north110, and a small branch comes in on the left at about mile 45.6111. The last pool above the mouth is George Fry Hole, flanked by a low bluff on the right, with a slick rock spring below it. It is named for a captain in the Civil War who lived nearby. George Fry’s mother was a Galbraith, and by one account he and the Galbraiths owned the mill at the Junction.

The Junction

Confluence, pool, mill and ferry · mile 46.21 · Plate A13

The Jacks Fork meets the Current at mile 46.21112. The place has carried several names: the Junction, Jack’s Fork for its post office, Coot Bay, and Two Rivers113, the name most people use now (Chapter 18). Just below the meeting, in the Current115, lies the deep, swirling Junction Hole, the Big Eddy114 of a map of 1980. It was once much larger and was called Coot Bay, for Thomas “Coot” Chilton, who lived a short way down the Current. By one family record he was Thomas Boggs Chilton, and his daughter Elizabeth (1822–1899) married Joshua Chilton117. By one account, in June or July of 1876, with the Current running full, men from a lumber camp swam across the muddy river and back. Someone called to John Buffington, halfway across, to let down and show how deep it was. He went down and did not come up, and his body was found eleven days later a mile downstream. In 1986 a man who knew the place told archaeologists that a hole thirty feet deep at the confluence had filled with gravel to about four116 (Chapter 3).

By one account John Hyer built a water-powered sawmill at the Junction about 1880. It passed to Galbraith and Fry and in 1887 to the Current River Land and Cattle Company. Known as the Junction Mill or the Galbraith Mill, it could saw about 40,000 feet of lumber a day and was said to sell the best lumber in the county118. Before the war, by one account, William Shedd, a Vermonter, kept a store at the Junction for a time (Chapter 5). By one account a Union army camped here in February 1863 on its march to Pilot Knob, and two state militiamen, or two renegades, were killed while camped at the Junction (Chapters 6 and 8). From 1913 a motorboat ran between Coot Bay and Chilton, on the Current, and a post office called Jack’s Fork served the settlement from about 1917 to 1954119 (Chapter 8).

Bertha Hunt came to the Jacks Fork community at the age of six, in 1912, when her parents rented and then bought land at the mouth. Ties stacked by the river were rafted each fall down the Current to Chicopee, below Van Buren (Chapter 7). In 1925 she married a carpenter named Russell, and in 1927 they bought the place. The Russells secured the right-of-way for the road that became Highway V; before it, the only way to Eminence was a wagon road that crossed the river about six times (Chapter 8). They built six tourist cabins along the bank and, in 1935, a log store that also held the post office, which she kept for ten years. They rented johnboats and outfitted float trips, and her husband, who built his own motors and boats, kept a johnboat tied on each side of the river as a ferry for the neighbors. Below the present store, she said, there had been rich bottom land, since washed away. The Park Service took the buildings down after it acquired the land.

A map of 1980 puts the Junction Landing and Cooley Ferry on the Current120 just below the meeting, and the old ferry crossing noted there in 1977121 crossed the Current (Chapter 8). The park’s campground and landing at Two Rivers stand on the bench above the Current122 (Chapters 3 and 11), and the recommended take-out123 is about three-quarters of a mile down the Current, at the old ferry landing (Chapter 20). By one account the hill across the river is made of reddish rhyolite, and its leaves turn pale yellow in midsummer because the rock holds moisture less well than limestone or dolomite (Chapter 1).

Into the Current

At the Junction the Jacks Fork, with Alley Spring and Blue Spring in it, goes into the Current, about forty-six miles124 from the junction of its prongs. The Current carries it on past Owls Bend and Van Buren125. Rules for the river are in Part Six.