SharePhotos and story by Jo Schaper
Despite the efforts of reenactment commissions, a modern Civil War encampment can never be anything but an (ironically) more civil replica of the real thing. There are the wives and the children around, for one. Hardly anyone is filthy, tired, out-of-sorts or stinks, not to mention actually injured or dying. [...]

ShareBy Tom Uhlenbrock
Missouri State Parks
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Linda Endersby had a ready answer when asked for the strangest item in the collection of the Missouri State Museum. “Ella Ewing’s shoes,” she said. “They’re size 24s.”
Endersby is the director of the museum, which is in the State Capitol building in Jefferson City, and she knows [...]

ShareBy Jo Schaper
We try to treat everyone equally well around here, but occasionally a special request from a special person gets a special response
About a week ago, Rich Orr asked when we were going to take a picture of the old St. Clair Motel sign. He said he thought that was all that was left. [...]

ShareAfter failing through inaction in 2008 and 2009, a bill to issue $5 gold commemorative and $1 silver commemorative coins with the likeness of Mark Twain passed the U.S. House April 18.
The bill, H.R. 2453, sponsored by Rep. Blaine Leutkemeyer whose district includes Hannibal, Missouri, would direct the U.S. Mint to make [...]

ShareWappapello Lake – April 2, 2012: Spring is in the air and soon the smell of gunpowder will be there as well as the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers at Wappapello Lake and the Crowley’s Ridge Black Powder Club host the 34th Annual Black Powder Rendezvous on April 14 and 15, 2012, at [...]

ShareThis from long time friend Rich Orr:
Union Pacific’s steam locomotive, No. 844, will be coming through Washington on Tuesday, March 27 at approximately 4PM. The train is traveling from Cheyenne, WY to Marion, AR. pulling a special 150th Anniversay Commemoration Civil War Troop Train with nearly 300 civil war historians from the midwest on their [...]

ShareBy Jo Schaper
If you’re like me, of a “certain age” and brought up in Missouri, you probably remember Missouri Department of Conservation 16-millimeter films being shown in public school. These were fifteen to thirty minutes long and a welcome occasional break from days of books, pencils and paper. (Yes, you young’uns, back in the [...]

ShareBy Tom Uhlenbrock
Missouri State Parks
MIAMI, Mo. – Wave after wave of migrating waterfowl moved in V formations across the winter sky on this late afternoon. The landscape below of marsh, wet prairie and forest known as the Oumessourit Natural Area was filled with the cries of Canada geese, snow geese and ducks. A bald eagle [...]

ShareThat Son of a Gun Had Sense:
Mule Stories from the Bootheel Area during the 1930s-1940s Era
By Lonny Thiele • Stinson Press, Poplar Bluff
No ISBN • 2010 • 298 p. • $25.95; $28.01 w/tax • $31.51 w/tax and shipping

It’s hard to believe that people still alive in Missouri worked the land with mules as children, but [...]

ShareBy Jo Schaper
Scanning the Net news headlines popped up this report that National Park Service officials recently toured Ste. Genevieve as part of an ongoing study whether or not Park Service wants to get involved in historic preservation of architecture in that town. The study was commissioned in 2005, and the report is due out [...]