July 7, 2011
“It is with rivers as it is with people; the greatest are not always the most agreeable." - Henry Van Dyke (American writer, 1852-1933).
Recently in a past column, I wrote about the little Missouri town of Plato that is now officially the new population center of the country. From time to time throughout the summer, I will be visiting and writing about other "little towns in Missouri". This week--Forest City.
Once the little town of Forest City in northwest Missouri was a thriving river community with hopes that it might someday be a major port city on the Missouri River.
The river was loved, valued and welcome.
That changed suddenly, overnight in fact. Without warning, the river changed course on Aug. 10, 1868, and gave no indication that it planned to do so.
Boats that were docked there when the river left had to be pulled by mule train to the new channel, according to the Mound City News, a Holt County newspaper.
Life changed in hours for the growing town that boasted seven hotels, some considered among the finest along the river, and warehouses loaded with all types of merchandise, and the daily prosperous shipping of goods in and out of the port.
It was a "Going Jesse", as the late Al Fike, longtime resident of Forest City, used to say.
Can you imagine going to bed with the river outside your door and when you wake in the morning it is gone, completely out of sight?
Fast forward to the Flood of 2011.
Although the river channel has been in the approximate same spot since 1868, the channel now lies somewhere to the west across the flooded bottoms. The first levee system located west of town breached earlier in the summer.
Currently, the 340 residents of Forest City, in a figurative sense, find themselves looking out their window to discover that the river is back indeed. Worse than that, it is lapping at their door.
This time, however, the river is not so welcome.
Between 1857 when Forest City was founded and 1868 when the river deserted them, Forest City folks and the river co-existed well.
The river brought commerce and good fortune to the bustling town. Steamboat captains, according to the Mound City News, were happy to deal there because merchants paid in gold rather than paper money, which could have a different value in different places.
Thriving merchants with gold in their pockets, hotels, tourists and trade once put Forest City "on the map", that is until the map itself changed.
Today, there are a few historic buildings that remain, most notably the Drug Store Museum. It features a working old-fashioned soda fountain, gift shop, library, and museum displays. Bob Ripley, editor of the Oregon Times-Observer, says the Drug Store, circa 1859, is open to the public on Sunday afternoons during the summer and early fall.
Other historic buildings are still in use, such as St. Patrick's Catholic Church with its impressive pipe organ and ornate oak alter and City Hall with a stage once praised by vaudeville artists for its trap door and footlights. Both buildings have interiors that are much the same as when built in the early 1900s.
Travel tip: If you visit, be sure and enjoy some homemade pie at the Forest City Diner where the varieties of the day are usually written on a dry erase board. A heads up: when they write "one piece of coconut cream pie left", they mean it. Be prepared to fight for it, or be happy with whatever they give you instead, it's all good.
Despite this summer's devastating "Flood of 2011", so far Forest City proper has been spared, and one can still make one's way to Forest City via County Road 111 from Oregon, a neighboring town not far from Interstate 29.
Forest City, a little town in Missouri, survives regardless of whatever the river decides to do, co-exist menacingly nearby or move overnight.
In Forest City, life with a river is complicated.
