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See The Ozarks: The Touristic Image
Leland and Crystal Payton
ISBN 0-9673925-1-9 2003 $24.95

See The Ozarks presents the Ozark experience in terms of the garish, colorful brochures, and tourist kitsch which have enticed flatlanders to visit the area over the last hundred years.
In this profusely illustrated book, postcards, billboards, Daisy Mae figurines, fringed pillows [...]

It’s time for summer reading. To help with the effort, Traveler will be going through our booklist, our list of online reviews and reprising some, as well as adding to them. If something snags your interest– well, we’re adding quick “buy now” buttons. (Father’s Day is coming…what have you gotten the old man?)

We think these [...]

By Jo Schaper
Traveler has learned a proposal to return the 77-acre Sylvan Springs Park in South St. Louis County to the federal government to expand the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery has once again gained traction with County Executive Charles Dooley.
Dooley, whose proposals to shutter popular parks and divest the county of several smaller [...]

By Tom Uhlenbrock
Missouri State Park Stories
TRENTON, Mo. – Tucked into the farmlands of the northwest corner of Missouri, Crowder State Park is a rich refuge of forested hills and river bottoms that holds the mystery of Leatherwood Hollow.
The popular north loop of the Thompson River Trail leads down the steep hills to the river. Detour [...]

Lens & Pen Press’s newest title is their third book to receive IPPY recognition
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Damming the Osage: The Conflicted Story of Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Reservoir, by Leland and Crystal Payton, has won a silver medal in Best Regional Non-Fiction Mid-West (which includes eight states) in the 2013 Independent Publishers Book [...]

There is an old saying in karst: “Whatever goes down, must come up.”
By Jo Schaper
Fulbright Spring, gone for a hundred years, resurfaces in Springfield
http://www.ky3.com/news/ky3-historic-spring-resurfaces-in-central-springfield-20130514,0,2604196.story?track=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
The gist of the story is that the city is in the midst of a rehab project near Founder’s Park (the area near W. College and Fort St.) to create greenspace from [...]

Missouri Shadows
Dan Terry
Missouri Kid Press
182 pages $14.99
978-0-9797654-0-7
Softcover
Ghost sightings throughout Missouri in 20 chapters, including Washington, Iron, St. Louis, St. Louis City, Jefferson, Franklin, Crawford, St. Francois, St. Charles, Marion, Gasconade, Cooper, Jasper, Newton, Greene and Jackson counties.
Reviewed by Jo Schaper

Most people like a good ghost story, and doubly so when it is associated with [...]

And what does that have to with Traveler Country?
John Luther “Casey” Jones was born somewhere in the rural Bootheel. Where exactly seems to have been lost in the mists of the early 20th century. Most accounts just say “southeastern Missouri,” and the details seem to indicate somewhere in Mississippi or New Madrid counties. It [...]

By: Lonny Thiele
Mules were used for farming in this country roughly 1785 to 1950 or 165 years. Mule numbers peaked in the US at 2.7 million in 1920, but there were still 1.9 million mules in 1940, that included 209,000 in Missouri. The three leading Missouri counties in 1940 in mule numbers were the Bootheel [...]