Genevieve newspaper that the work had been “temporarily abandoned” while waiting to see if legislation would pass to allow the building of a large dam near Hollister. The original plans called for a power plant at the base of the tunnel dam, which a 1912 article speculated could provide power to nearby settlements along the James and White Rivers, and that a “half-a-dozen” power sites along them might produce a “a hundred thousand horsepower sufficient to manufacture all the cotton raised in Arkansas and Oklahoma”! Standish soon recruited the Amberson Hydraulic Company to assist with construction, but by the summer of 1913, news of the dam’s progress dried up in area newspapers, save a reference in a Ste. (The Peytons note that a tunnel dam on the Niangua River uses an 800-foot-long tunnel to produce a 40-foot fall, and only cuts off seven miles of the river, producing a “modest amount” of electricity for Sho-Me Electric Cooperative.) The dam would have effectively dried up some 35 miles of river, eliminating popular float trips along the James that I mentioned in my last blog. Standish soon expanded the tunnel to 7,000 feet long, with a head equal to a dam 85 feet high, which would change a part of the James through the bluff. connection to the James!īut after Teddy left office and was replaced by William Howard Taft, Standish tried again with another proposal for a tunnel dam, which again Congress passed in 1911, allocating some $150,000 for the project, including a 3,000-foot tunnel to provide a forty-foot fall. “Given the president’s reputation as an outdoorsman, one might conjecture that he had fished the James and wished to preserve it as premier smallmouth stream,” notes Leland and Crystal Peyton’s James Fork of the White, “But there is no indication that he ever floated any Ozarks river.” Given my love of all things Teddy Roosevelt, I share the Peyton’s disappointment that he never was “dee-lighted” about a float from Galena to Branson, but at least we have a bona fide T.R. Passed by Congress, Standish’s proposal soon found itself on the desk of none other than President Theodore Roosevelt, who promptly vetoed the legislation because of its monopolistic control of the waters of the James. The curse even stopped a dam on the James, if you believe in such things.Īround 1908, a colorful character named “General” William Henry Standish, a Civil War veteran from New York, moved to Aurora and began to propose the idea of a dam on the James to produce hydroelectric power. The rapids below the bluff reportedly claimed a number of lives throughout the 1800s, which seemed to confirm the old chief’s warning that the bluff was haunted. The Chief reportedly placed a curse on the bluff, and early settlers of Stone County said that her cries and sobs could be heard near the spot. Learning of the chief’s plot against him, the Spaniard fled the area, never to return, and in her grief, young girl (in many versions named Moon Song) threw herself from the cliff that was later named for her. The love affair was soon thwarted by the girl’s father, who was chief of her tribe. It takes its name from a local legend about a Native American woman who reportedly fell in love with a Spanish soldier who was part of a party of explorers, possibly under Hernando de Soto. Virgin Bluff is located three miles south of Cape Fair, where the James enters Table Rock Lake. Since today is Halloween, I thought it might be fun to devote a blog to an honest-to-goodness James River ghost story! Have you ever heard about the ghost of Virgin Bluff? And more importantly, how does this ghost story relate to JRBP’s mission to protect the James and other Ozarks streams?

Table rock lake project office