My dad used to pile us into the gold, 1969 Cadillac Sedan de Ville every Memorial Day and head south to Van Buren, home of Big Spring State Park. My dad's association goes back to the late 1930s, when he lived in Van Buren for a time. He said his dad owned some land down there and called it Valley Mount Ranch. My dad loved living down there and, thus, forced it upon us throughout my first 15 years on this earth.
Sometimes we'd stop at Elephant Rock State Park or Johnson's Shut Ins on the way and then pull over at the Lodi Roadside Park in Lodi, Missouri to eat our packed lunches a la Chevy Chase in Vacation. We'd either stay at the cabins in the park, built by the CCC in the 1930s, or the Starlight Motel, basically a crapfest where the pool was MUCH nicer than the rooms. Those were our vacations and I actually do have fond memories of those times hiking to the lookout tower with my dad or paying some old guy $5 for a john boat ride from the boat dock by the Big Spring Lodge on the Current River.
Anyway, my purpose was to visit the Carter County Courthouse in Van Buren in search of land deed records of Grandpa Oscar's ranch. No such records existed and the library flooded in March 2008, thus my drive, and subsequent searching, was rendered fruitless. So Oscar either didn't own the land or it was in a nearby county. Joy of joys. Back to the drawing board.
All was not lost, however, as I drove to the Big Spring and took a few photos on the Blackberry. I'll post more once I get them off the camera. What's not to like?
This shows the Big Spring draining into the Current River from the aforementioned boat dock.
Big Spring
No comments:
Post a Comment