At the end of the nineteenth century, the rugged landscape of the Courtois Hills in the Missouri Ozarks was host to an isolated society of tenacious inhabitants, who subsisted almost entirely on the resources of its rich forests. It was this same valuable timber that drew the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company to the area, and sparked an enduring cultural and environmental struggle. Author David Benac has composed a riveting history through his careful look at government documents, company records, local newspapers, and oral histories. This work examines more than sixty years of major social and economic changes for the fiercely independent residents and for the forest itself. In less than a century, the Courtois Hills saw the end of a near hunter-gatherer existence, the rise and fall of the profitable but devastating timber industry, and the beginning of a new era of conservation and environmental awareness.

The Ozarks of the mid-1800s was a land of divisions. The uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, North and South, frontier and civilization, and secessionist and Unionist. As civil war raged across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor, unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865. The second volume of Brooks Blevins's history begins with the region's distinctive relationship to slavery. Largely unsuitable for plantation farming, the Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or, in some places, not at all. Blevins moves on to the devastating Civil War years where the dehumanizing, personal nature of Ozark conflict was made uglier by the predations of marching armies and criminal gangs. Blending personal stories with a wide narrative scope, he examines how civilians and soldiers alike experienced the war, from brutal partisan warfare to ill-advised refugee policies to women's struggles to safeguard farms and stay alive in an atmosphere of constant danger. The war stunted the region's growth, delaying the development of Ozarks society and the processes of physical, economic, and social reconstruction. More and more, striving uplanders dedicated to modernization fought an image of the Ozarks as a land of mountaineers and hillbillies hostile to the idea of progress. Yet the dawn of the twentieth century saw the uplands emerge as an increasingly uniform culture forged, for better and worse, in the tumult of a conflicted era.

The Missouri Ozarks are blessed with many clear, spring-fed streams. One of the most scenic is the Current River. High up on the river, a low-water bridge serves as a popular put-in location for several thousand canoe and kayak floaters each year. The site is known as Cedar Grove. Many floaters arriving at the bridge have no idea of the origin of the put-in location's name. Summers at Cedar Grove is the story of the once thriving village that existed at the bridge told through the eyes of the author, who spent many summer days during his childhood at the family farm near the village. First known as Riverside, the village was formed in 1875 and was populated primarily by Scots-Irish migrants from Appalachia. During the timber boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Riverside rose to prominence and became known as Cedar Grove. The timber was stripped from the land over four decades, and the village eventually faded from existence. Through a combination of historical data and stories relayed from individuals who lived in the community, the reader will learn about the mill, stores, one-room school, health care in the village, and the people that supported it during its rise and fall.

Interest in scholarly study of the Ozarks has grown steadily in recent years, and The Ozarks in Missouri History: Discoveries in an American Region will be welcomed by historians and Ozark enthusiasts alike. This lively collection gathers fifteen essays, many of them pioneering efforts in the field, that originally appeared in the Missouri Historical Review, the journal of the State Historical Society. In his introduction, editor Lynn Morrow gives the reader background on the interest in and the study of the Ozarks. The scope of the collection reflects the diversity of the region. Micro-studies by such well-known contributors as John Bradbury, Roger Grant, Gary Kremer, Stephen Limbaugh Sr., and Milton Rafferty explore the history, culture, and geography of this unique region. They trace the evolution of the Ozarks, examine the sometimes-conflicting influences exerted by St. Louis and Kansas City, and consider the sometimes highly charged struggle by federal, state, and local governments to define conservation and the future of Current River.

A history of the bitter battles and skirmishes in the Ozark Region, including photos: “It’s great to see a revised edition of this Civil War classic.” —Ozarks Mountaineer In this revised edition of Civil War in the Ozarks, Phillip W. Steele and Steve Cottrell provide new insight into the clashes that occurred in the Ozarks and additional commentary from experts. Explanations of the political and cultural conditions there at the time create a backdrop for the drama that unfolded as a result. An updated map is also included. In writing the original version, the authors extensively researched the battles taking place between 1861 and 1865. With meticulous detail, they chronicle the heroes, outlaws, and peacemakers who were at the center of this hot-blooded battleground. Skirmishes between the abolitionist Kansas Jayhawkers and slaveholders in Arkansas and Missouri began years before the firing upon Fort Sumter, making the Ozarks a volatile and dangerous region during the Civil War. Although many citizens of Missouri wished to remain neutral, they reluctantly found themselves caught in the crossfire of raids between the two groups. Relocated Indian tribes of present-day Oklahoma also fell prey to the vicious fighting. As the war crept westward, more groups were drawn into the conflict—making the Ozarks one of the bloodiest regions in the battle between the Blue and Gray. Includes photos and illustrations “Highly recommended.” —Curled Up with a Good Book

Geologic forces raised the Ozarks. Myth enshrouds these hills. Human beings shaped them and were shaped by them. The Ozarks reflect the epic tableau of the American people—the native Osage and would-be colonial conquerors, the determined settlers and on-the-make speculators, the endless labors of hardscrabble farmers and capitalism of visionary entrepreneurs. The Old Ozarks is the first volume of a monumental three-part history of the region and its inhabitants. Brooks Blevins begins in deep prehistory, charting how these highlands of granite, dolomite, and limestone came to exist. From there he turns to the political and economic motivations behind the eagerness of many peoples to possess the Ozarks. Blevins places these early proto-Ozarkers within the context of larger American history and the economic, social, and political forces that drove it forward. But he also tells the varied and colorful human stories that fill the region's storied past—and contribute to the powerful myths and misunderstandings that even today distort our views of the Ozarks' places and people. A sweeping history in the grand tradition, A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1: The Old Ozarks is essential reading for anyone who cares about the highland heart of America.

By Clint Lacy. Deep in the eastern Ozarks of Missouri, a battle still rages about a massacre that happened on Christmas Day of 1863. While some call it a simple rescue mission to liberate captured Union soldiers, others claim that it was mass murder, which included women, children and the elderly.The Civil War (or the War of the Rebellion as many Southerners prefer to call it), was a bitter and brutal conflict, but perhaps never more so than in the state of Missouri, where the wounds of the Kansas border wars were still open and festering.Though no famous battles were fought in Missouri, there was severe fighting across the state. In fact, Missouri ranks third in the number of battles and skirmishes during the war. Most of the 1,162 military encounters that took place in the Show Me State were smaller and much more personal than in the Eastern Theater of the war.The brutality of the conflict was punctuated with multiple Union war crimes, especially in the eastern Ozarks. There, Southern patriots like Joe Shelby, Timothy Reeves and others raised regiments and did the best they could to halt the advance of the better-armed and better-supplied Union juggernaut, conducting lightning raids and surprise attacks--and even beating the Union in pitched battles.But rather than take their frustrations out upon the rebel forces, Union commanders in the area--Maj. James Wilson, Capt. William Leeper and others--preferred instead to target the civilians of the Ozarks as a way to subjugate the Southern sympathizers of the region. As a result of this policy, 27,000 Missouri citizens were killed during the war.Starvation, theft, looting, torching homes and outright murder were not uncommon tactics used by this bevy of Federal miscreants whose criminal tactics culminated on Christmas Day 1863 at Tom Pulliam's farm in Ripley County. It was there, on one of the holiest of Christian holidays, a day universally regarded as a day to avoid bloodshed between even the most bitter of enemies, that the Confederates and their families were set upon by a group of Union cavalry under the command of the aforementioned Maj. Wilson.According to eyewitnesses and numerous other sources, 34 of the attendees were killed and 100 more wounded by the berserk Union Missouri State Militia Cavalry.To this day, local historians with an axe to grind have worked diligently to cover up this heinous war crime--perhaps the worst of the Civil War--to protect local reputations. Historian Jerry Ponder, who was the first modern historian to expose this Christmas Day massacre--was relentlessly defamed for his pioneering reports on the tragedy. But, despite the recriminations, Ponder never backed off his research or his story.Sadly, Ponder passed away in 2005, but author Clint Lacy has taken up Ponder's torch of truth and, in this book, Lacy presents all the known evidence, making a strong case that the Wilson Massacre, as it has come to be known, did in fact occur as Ponder claimed, despite the denials of those looking to sweep it under the rug.But the Wilson Massacre was not the only Union war crime in Missouri. Lacy also discusses many others committed by Union forces in Missouri in his attempt to bring history into accord with the facts and shine the light of truth on one of the darkest periods of American history. This is a Seconde Edition contains 143 pages of new information which includes personal biographies, newspaper archives of what life under Union occupation and select stories from the Slave Narratives and additional photos.