Pioneer Freighting in Howell County

In our world filled with automobiles, trucks, good roads, trains, and planes, it is hard to imagine a day when these conveniences were not readily available. Getting goods into rural Howell and surrounding counties was difficult, often taking days to deliver to a neighboring community. Without motorized transportation, things had to be hauled over the hills and hollows by animal and human power. With few or no improved roads, oxen and carts were first used, with mules taking their place as roads and wooden wagons improved. Horses and buggies came along later, eventually replaced by automobiles. In the time of the pioneers, animal power was the most reliable method of hauling farm products and goods for sale to market.

 

The Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railroad arrived in Howell County in 1882 with a line between Kansas City, Springfield, and West Plains, giving many towns direct access to distant markets to sell farm products and import supplies cheaply and efficiently. There was still the problem of the last mile or miles here in the hills, and many of the men who had been distant hauling switched to local drayage, using mules, horses, and wagons to connect customers with the railroad. I find the accounts from these early freighters and deliverymen fascinating. I imagine the scenes of incomparable beauty witnessed by these drivers and the hardships our terrain and constantly changing weather challenged them.

 

In an article published in the West Plains Journal in 1939, an "old timer" identified as "Back Yonder" tells of our transition from wilderness to a less trying time. The story, under the title "Old Timer Tells About Shipping Goods into West Plains Before the Railroad," reads:

 

"Sixty-seven years ago (1872), the railroad was completed to 'Salem, Dent County, this State,' until that time travel and merchandise came to West Plains by way of Rolla, Springfield and Batesville, Arkansas."

Before rudimentary roads were carved out, the earliest pioneers also used water travel to take furs, bear grease, and moonshine to markets downriver. Agriculture drove the need for market roads, and roads were the responsibility of the individual counties. They were most often created and maintained by volunteers or men signing up to work to pay poll taxes so they could vote. Market roads started in the 1840s and continued through the early 1860s, leading to Rolla or Springfield. Another rail line reached Rolla by way of Pilot Knob in Iron County, and ultimately St. Louis developed just before the Civil War, but the line stopped in Greene County during the war and decades beyond. An extension from rail lines north eventually reached Salem, Missouri, in the 1870s, opening up additional markets like St. Louis. 

 

Back Yonder continued, "Then traffic changed by way of Salem. A wagon road was cut out only wide enough for one way. To pass a wagon on the road, you sought a place where the standing trees were far apart enough to drive between them. Stumps were supposed to be less than knee high on 'the main traveled road.' How many inhabitants of Howell County can trace the original road? Do you know where it crossed Jack's Fork at Harlow's Mill? Do you remember Jack's Fork Hill north of the river? How many of you can tell where Harlow's Mill was? Do you remember the Jacks Fork Hill north of the river? "How many inhabitants of Howell County can trace the original road to Salem? Do you remember the Jack's Fork Hill north of the river? How steep? How long? The big elbow turn halfway up? How the teamsters locked the hind wheels to come down, not with a patent brake but lock chains and doubled up their teams to go up. Three days to Salem empty, four days to return loaded, 1,500 pounds was a load for a good team."

 

Over the past 150 years, Poe Hill has caused travelers grief. Several people and animals perished on the steep grade to the bottom, and deep ravines still lie on both sides of the narrow road. Thus, loaded wagons had their wheels chained, and the wheels skidded on the rocky road for a quarter mile to the river bottom.

 

"The road ran by way of White Church, Poe's Spring, and somewhere close to where Trask is now, went west of Eleven Points River and crossed as before stated Jacks Fork at Harlow's Mill, then to Summersville. Continuing halfway to Salem, then down Big Creek Hill to the Current River at Riverside, now called Cedar Grove, another good camping place just a few miles down the river from Montauk Spring, then called Darley's, now Montauk State Park."

 

The road described here generally followed the course of present-day Missouri Highway 17, at least in Howell County. Poe Spring is located at the foot of Poe Hill, the present-day location of the Rock Garden Christian Camp south of Mountain View. Harlow's Mill dates before the Civil War and was located a short distance downriver from the Prongs of the Jacks Fork near Cold Spring. Union troops burned the mill during the war." 

 

Back to Back Yonder, and a look at the western side of Howell County:

 

"How would you like to drive around the world with a mule team riding in an ordinary wagon? This is a feat accomplished two times and more - had he found land the entire way instead of making trips between West Plains and Bakersfield. In 1892, Uncle Charley (Charles T. Brown) began freighting between Bakersfield and West Plains. He brought a load of cotton or eggs and chickens to the railroad and took back a cargo of groceries and dry goods for the merchants of the thriving Ozark County town. For ten years and nine months, he kept this up, making two trips a week, fifty weeks each year. During that period, he made 1,076 trips, traveling 55,952 miles, counting the distance between Bakersfield as 26 miles, by government surveys."

Pioneer Henry Smith wrote of the importance of haulers to farmers seeking a market for their produce. In the 1930s, he wrote about his community of Hutton Valley: "As the town developed, the freighting business became quite an item but was done largely by farmers who would haul their wheat and anything they had to market to Rolla and then bring back a load of goods for which the merchants paid 65 cents per hundred pounds."

 

Smith added, "Here, I must tell you a story that actually happened. John Findley, who had a drug store, got Tom Harlow, who did considerable freight hauling, to go with him for a load of goods. On the way back, as was common, they ran out of bread. It took 6 or 7 nights camping to make the trip. They camped by a farm. The house, being back up in the field from the road, Harlow told Findley to get the campfire going and he would go up to the house and see about getting some bread baked. Findley soon heard a terrible noise up at the house, looked up and saw Harlow running around the house with a big dog chasing him. He had a very strong voice and was using it to the limit. He learned at once to turn the corner short and let the dog run on, and that way, he could beat him to the next corner. Finally, the lady with a broom got the dog stopped until he could get into the house. She told him she would make some bread for the next day. Harlow told Findley he would not go back up to that house for all the bread in the world, but the next morning early, a man brought them a big pan of good biscuits and wouldn't take any pay for them."

 

Returning to Back Yonder's account, "Often the roads became muddy, or there were high waters, but even these obstacles did not prevent the veteran freighter from making his regular trips. He knew every trail and road, and those who followed him always got through. In 1903 Charley retired after traveling a distance of more than twice around the globe, faithfully serving the people of Bakersfield, bringing them food and clothing from the railroad. He still lives in Bakersfield and occasionally visits West Plains. He hopes someday to see an automobile road from here to the Arkansas state line."

 

An article published in the West Plains Journal in 1934 under the byline, "Ye Olden Times in Howell County," told its readers of the years before the automobile around the turn of the century: "The only impediment to trade was getting goods here. Langston's, Clark's, and Carter & Alsup would have as many as 15 to 25 teams on the road hauling from Salem and sometimes Rolla. Farmers were glad to get their freighting trips. The weekly mail from Salem, Missouri, came horseback. Money was sent out by teamsters. No hold-ups happened." (I'm unsure whether the words “hold-ups” refers to armed robberies or delays – maybe both.)

 

"Freight on a barrel of salt was $3.75 and sold for $6.00 here (West Plains.) Freight sent out was deer skins, cow hides, dried peaches, dried apples, cotton, wool, etc. Merchants would cash anybody's checks and were glad to get them and never had a loss on poor checks." 

 

Charles T. “Freighter” Brown died in Christa Hogan Hospital in West Plains in 1928, at the age of ninety. Though he had been retired from freighting almost thirty years the Howell County Gazette devoted a large article on its front page in tribute to his life, writing, “For many years ‘Freighter’ Brown as he was known, drove a freight wagon and every man woman and child along the 27 long miles knew him and watched for his coming. From Bakersfield to West Plains the freighter bought produce and on the return trip he took freight and merchandise. Sometimes he brought in a bale or two of cotton, then again he would have chickens, butter and eggs, wool, or a lot of ginseng and golden seal. The cotton was grown in Howell and Ozark counties and the medicinal herbs gathered by natives along the banks of the North Fork.”

 

“It was often Brown’s boast that he had one hundred customers along the road he traversed. From them he would get chickens, eggs, berries, apples, hides, butter, and every kind of produce and fruit. In the winter, when game was plentiful he would bring in wild turkey, quail, squirrel, rabbits, and an occasional deer. Anyone could kill game and sell it for there was no closed season.”

 

Two of Brown’s sons tried their hand at continuing his business, but both quit within a year, deciding that logging in Washington state was an easier option. Charley Brown, as his friends knew him, provided a valuable service to the pioneers of Howell County, even providing a little money to the cash-starved farmers in our early history.