March 2014

March 19, 2014March 19, 2014

Dr. Hayes and Hayti’s History

Mother has some serious eagle eyes. She can spot a tiny cemetery on the side of the road faster than Curator Jessica. On the way back from interviewing Bishop Armour in Hayti for my New Madrid baptism project, Mother pointed out some tombstones alongside the road mixed in with some strip malls and commercial buildings. It was worth a U-turn.

Dr. Granville M. Hayes 1827 – 1899

A tall stone dominates the tiny Hayes Cemetery. It says, Through the foresight and generosity of this early settler from Kentucky, the Hayes family farm was transformed into what is now the City of Hayti. Dr. Hayes generously donated all the land now designated as our streets. He gave one city block to Pemiscot County for a Courthouse and another block was given to the people of Hayti for a school. Portions of two other blocks were given for a jail and a calaboose. It is estimated that Dr. Hayes donated 75% of his original farm to the people of Hayti. It was his dream to have a town with a city square with “Lights and squirrels just like Memphis.” Dr. Hayes died at a medical convention in Chicago and was brought back home by train and buried in this cemetery, but there was no monument erected at his grave. This monument is erected to honor Dr. Granville Hayes, Hayti’s namesake and founder and to commemorate the centennial of Hayti. Erected 1995.

History is like a bumper sticker

I was talking with Dr. Lily Santoro about doing a presentation for her SEMO historical preservation class. I hope I can get across to the students that historical markers are like bumper stickers: they are a quick read, but they may not tell the whole story.

When I searched for Dr. Hayes, not a lot popped up, but what did was fascinating.

At the time the Hayes and their daughters donated the land, the Pemiscot county seat was located at Gayso, several miles to the east. Louis Houck (remember him) and J.E. Franklin were promoting a railroad from Caruthersville to Kennett. They reached an agreement that they would run this road through the Hayes land if they would lay out a town on it and deed every alternate lot to Houck and Franklin. Block 29 was dedicated to be used for a courthouse and the other stuff mentioned on the memorial.

Then, partially because of a conflict between the “wets” and the “drys, Caruthersville, not Gayso City / Hayti was made the county seat. The June 9, 1910, Hayti Herald bannered a headline, “Likened Unto An Octopus – Caruthersville Has Waxed Fat at the Expense of the County Which Like a Lamb, Lies Dumb Before Its Sharers.” [Editor’s note: I wonder if the paper meant “shearers?”] Anyway, you don’t get to read many stories today where the word “Judas” is used twice on the front page. They, obviously, weren’t happy at the way things worked out. If you like the days when newspapers had real fire in them, check out this link.

Now it gets REALLY confusing

Here’s where it REALLY got confusing. Since Block 29 wasn’t used for a courthouse, there was a bunch of wrangling over who should get the land. The matter hadn’t been decided when The Hayti Herald weighed in again on January 26, 1911. It did a pretty good job of summarizing the issues, but this nice turn of phrase jumped out: “So the county has itself no power to act in the matter, even in a thousand years or a million years or when Gabriel blows his horn, except to use the property for courthouse purposes, for the reason that every lot that has ever been sold in the City of Hayti have been sold with reference to this plat.”

Supreme Court Judgement

I’m not even going to try to interpret the twists and turns of Williams et al. v. City of Hayti (No. 17705) as reported in the Southwestern Reporter, Volume 184. You can read the Missouri Supreme Court Rehearing Denied March 30, 1916, report for yourself. I made a wise decision to go into photography and not law way back in high school. Taking pictures doesn’t make my head hurt.

Dr. Granville didn’t get Hayti made into the county seat and he didn’t get his courthouse. Now that I know what to look for, I’ll have to see if he got “a city square with ‘Lights and squirrels just like Memphis.’”

March 17, 2014May 9, 2021

A Blast at the Quarry

After I ran photos of the cement plant quarry yesterday, reader Keith Robinson sent me this sequence of photos of the caverns being blasted. He annotated my1966 aerial to show where the blast was centered.

You can see to the right of the “box” the narrow wall that divided the “Blue Hole” from the main quarry. Keith said family friend Burl Medlock made it possible for him to take the photos.

He said the blast used 300 tons of explosives and loosened 1.5 million tons of rock. The surface area was estimated at 6 acres and was up to 200 feet deep. Here’s The Missourian’s version of the blast.

Keith’s photo gallery of the explosion

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

March 17, 2014May 8, 2021

The Quarry from the Top

Without thinking I had a chance in the world of success, I approached Buzzi Unicem plant manage Steve Leus in the fall of 2010 to ask for a tour of the cement plant and quarry. That usually results in months of getting bounced from corporate type to corporate type, ending up in a “No.”

I showed up in Steve’s office with a stack of prints I had taken over the past 40 years from the air, from inside the caverns, from the quarry’s edge, and of the plumes of white particulate that used to belch from the stacks of the plant. We had a great conversation, then he handed me a hard hat and we were on our way. THAT’S the kind of manager I like to deal with.

There are some stories that paralyze me because they are special to me. This is one of those. I kept putting off and putting off publishing it because I wanted to research the history of the plant that has changed names many times, boil down Steve’s explanation of how rock becomes cement and do it right.

Let’s pull the trigger

Today, more than three years later, I figured I’d better pull the trigger on this puppy and start publishing it in bits and pieces. I am NEVER going to do all that research and transcribe the paper and digital notes I have. Let’s get real: I’m a photographer, not a historian. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Part One will show the huge hole in the ground from the top. Well, not ALL the way from the top. I’ve got a bunch of aerial photos over the years that will run later.

Sometime in the future, I’ll publish photos taken from the bottom of the quarry including the tunnels that you are driving over when you are on Sprigg Street.

Unfortunately, NOBODY, Steve said, is allowed in them. There’s no danger of Sprigg Street collapsing, but safety regulations are a lot more stringent than they were a hundred years ago.

The old Blue Hole

If I remember my history and what Steve told me, the rounded area on the far right was what was popularly known as the “Blue Hole,” called that because of the color of the water that filled it. At one time, this area was two quarries. When the caverns were blown, it became one big hole.

You can see the dome of SEMO’s Academic Hall sticking up in the center of the photo.

Earlier stories about the quarry and cement plant

Quarry photo gallery

Some of the photos look a bit repetitious, but there are subtle difference in all of them. Click on any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery. Thanks to Steve for sharing a part of Cape that has fascinated me since I was a kid.

March 15, 2014

Serpentine Suggestions?

I was scrolling through aerial photos from November 11,2010, when an unusual shape caught my eye. It was in just one frame, and I couldn’t place what or where it was. (Click on the photo to make it larger.)

I called up Google Earth and worked my way along I-55 looking for the serpentine-shaped pavement at the lower left. After determining that the four-lane divided highway wasn’t the Interstate, I figured out that north-south road was South Kingshighway and the major road running east and west and intersecting with it is the Southern Parkway.

Running across the bottom of the photo is the Cape Recreational Trail paralleling Cape LaCroix Creek.

I was confused, though, because something as oddly shaped as my target should pop right out. By looking at the other landmarks in the area, I determined that the building was located on the south side of Commercial Street where it deadends at South Kingshighway. The reason I couldn’t find it is that it’s been wiped out.

I shot my photo in 2010. Google Earth showed it there in 2011, but when they make their last pass on April 1, 2012, the land was in the process of being cleared. Google Earth has a cool timeline slider that will let you step back through all their photos. The track hadn’t been built when they flew over it on on March 26, 1993, but it did appear on March 21, 1996.

So, what WAS it, a go kart track?