Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER FOUR
white-canvas-topped wagons
wound
west into the new country 150 years ago, up the rivers
and the little lost creeks, past laurel thickets and into
the beechwood glades.
The settlers stopped their tired teams beside clear
pools and springs. They camped and looked around
them — at the black soil, at the mountains rolling to
the sky. And sometimes, when the mists had blown out
of the hollows next morning, they stayed. And built.
A clearing for a garden, with the inevitable stand of
corn, was first in order. Shelter was often an over-
hanging bluff for many months. Sometimes it was a
tarpaulin stretched from the wagon bows to the
ground. For days and weeks, the sound of axes echoed
up the spring creeks, and threads of wood smoke rose
from the new campfires.
Logs were burned on the spot or rolled aside to be
hewn for the house. Then, sometimes a year or more
later, the settler and his wife and older children raised
the cabin, or if neighbors were near, a community rais-
ing was held. Hewn on two sides using the broadaxe,
the logs were carried or dragged to the chosen site.
Water was the first consideration for that site, and
early cabins were located near springs or streams. A
favored location was against a rise of hill, overlooking
the sloping floor of a hollow that was to become fields,
down to a creek or river. If a side branch or spring ran
by, even better. These were also the sites favored by the
Indians for their hunting camps and villages, and
many a pioneer homestead was littered with shards of
pottery and bits of stone bowls. I have found deeply
hollowed stone mortars in old stone fences through-
out the mountains.
The evening damp brought chills, and settlers tried
to build on higher ground, even if it meant carrying
water. But the blufftops, far from bottomland fields
and exposed to winter blasts, were also avoided. Only
after successive generations pushed their claims up
the ridges were the rocky tops cleared and home-
steaded. As the first settlers' children and then their
children grew and spread back up the mountains, sites
became more remote, less ideal.
Many of these ridgetop cabins still survive — tum-
bled ruins left stranded when the automobile came,
unable to follow the wagon roads up the hollows.
This Ozarks homestead is located on river-bottom fields of the Little
Buffalo, which runs against the bluff beyond.
