Was Truman's Engineering/Planning Flawed?

[tjm]

 Any stretch of river is better than any sized lake.

[shaker]

9 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

In all honesty that stretch of river wasn't much to get excited about.  

For the most part, I grew up along the Grand River = big mud hole, now the Osage that was a lot better river. 

RB

[oneshot]

I remember when Warsaw was Spoonbill Capital of the World and people used Pool Cues for Rods.

Osage had some good Catfishing too.

I think we bit the bullet this time several days of dry to get things better.

oneshot

[fishinwrench]

6 hours ago, tjm said:

 Any stretch of river is better than any sized lake.

Not really.  The Osage above Warsaw, after the logging, was nothing but a giant meandering sand filled ditch.

[tjm]

I don't remember it being logged, but I had fun fishing it and the grand for a couple years in my high school years. I guess that is where I learned to fish. No way to grow crops on a lake nor to visit the historic family farms, nor the cemeteries.  No way for birds and bats to nest in inundated bluffs. no way for fish or eels to migrate to head waters.  Man made river lakes are just fundamentally wrong, but we won't realize that as a nation for another century or two.

[fishinwrench]

19 minutes ago, tjm said:

Man made river lakes are just fundamentally wrong, but we won't realize that as a nation for another century or two.

I won't disagree with that.  There's no need for "flood control" if you just let floods be floods everything works out just fine.

[MickinMO]

1 hour ago, fishinwrench said:

Not really.  The Osage above Warsaw, after the logging, was nothing but a giant meandering sand filled ditch.

Many parts of Missouri were ruined by logging.  Much of the bootheel was wetland or forest at one time. Both of those help slow or negate flooding. They drained the wetlands and cut the trees to grow crops. Then they built levees to "protect" the farmland. The levees make flooding worse. 

[fishinwrench]

Yeah the evidence of logging in my area is obvious.   Finding a tree that you can't reach around is very rare here.

[tjm]

Yet when Henry Schoolcraft explored the Ozarks he had to use pack horses to carry camp fire wood because it was often more than a days travel between trees.

Grandpa's description of the SW corner of the state from ~1900  was what he called "prairie" but by our standards was savanna; this area that was mostly treeless in his youth has been logged constantly during my life time.   It was mostly after white settlement that trees grew. Wild fire prevention killed our grasslands here.

[oneshot]

Back in the ‘60s in SW Missouri the Timber was sprayed then Dozers came in cleared it, then Fescue seeded.

In ‘50s every clear spot with some dirt was planted in Grain Crops even Corn. It was raised mostly for feed, had Milk Cow, Chickens and Hogs

Yes people cut Ties, Firewood, Logs , I remember some stealing Walnut Logs. We use to cut a tree every so often for Honey.

There was a lot more Game back then. It wasn’t nothing to wade streams fishing and setting lines.

Back then Branson was about 300 people.

oneshot