Hannibal, Missouri, founded in 1819 on the Mississippi River, has come a long way from its humble beginnings when it was home to only 30 residents. During the late 1800s, millions of feet of lumber were processed in its mills. By 1905, Hannibal had become a major rail hub, with over 50 passenger trains arriving daily. Today, Hannibal honors the memory of its most famous citizen, Mark Twain, and thrives on the legacy of the everyday people who built this idyllic river town. With over 200 historic photographs, Bluff City Memories explores the town that Twain made famous. These images recall festivals, floods, fires, and buildings that are now long gone. They also document events such as President Theodore Roosevelt's speech to a crowd at Union Station in 1903, and the aftermath of a shootout involving 1930s desperado John Dillinger.
There's something magical about Hannibal, as if the town is frozen in time, as if you can look over your shoulder and see Tom and Huck making their way down to Bear Creek, fishing poles in hand. But set aside Twain for a moment (if that is possible to do in Hannibal) and drink in the broader vistas of the town's past. Imagine the pioneers who first settled between these bluffs, the riverboat calliopes singing their tunes as they pulled into port, the smell of fresh-cut lumber. Wave to the fashionable ladies parading down Broadway during the Gilded Age or save your greeting for visitors like FDR, Truman and Carter. Take countless more imaginative steps back through Hannibal's heritage in this accessible history by Ken and Lisa Marks.
The tragic story of 1967's largest cave search in history, where three Hannibal boys goes missing in the local caves near the Mississippi. Nonfiction at its best.
Mark Twain's boyhood home of Hannibal, Missouri, often brings to mind romanticized images of Twain's fictional characters Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer exploring caves and fishing from the banks of the Mississippi River. In City of Dust, Gregg Andrews tells another story of the Hannibal area, the very real story of the exploitation and eventual destruction of Ilasco, Missouri, an industrial town created to serve the purposes of the Atlas Portland Cement Company. In this new edition, Andrews provides an introduction detailing the impact of this book since its initial publication in 1996. He writes of a new twist in the Ilasco saga, one that concerns the Continental Cement Company’s attempt, not unlike Atlas’s one hundred years earlier, to manipulate the sale of a piece of land near its plant in the town. He explores the uneasy relationship between preservationists and the plant’s CEO and officials in St. Louis; the growing movement to preserve Ilasco’s heritage, including the building of a monument to commemorate the early residents of the town; and the grassroots petition drive and letter-writing campaign that stopped the Continental Cement Company’s machinations.
After living in Rockcliffe Mansion, where the haunted hallways were a rite of passage for countless Hannibalian youth, Ken and Lisa Marks learned firsthand that Hannibal, Missouri, is indeed haunted. Hannibal's own Mark Twain held a lifelong fascination with paranormal activity after experiencing an uncanny premonition of the death of his brother in 1858. Even skeptics will find it hard to resist the marvelously strange history of the limestone cave made famous in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer where the real-life, macabre Dr. McDowell experimented with his own daughter's corpse. Stories of the town's notorious red-light district and Hannibal's larger-than-life lumber barons provide even more spine-tingling evidence of the haunting of America's Hometown.
In the film version of the life of the "Unsinkable Molly Brown," she is rescued from the Colorado River and raised in the Rocky Mountains, but the actual Margaret Tobin Brown was born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri. Her formative years took place in the town's Gilded Age; the railroad brought in lumber barons, and as the wealth of Hannibal grew, so too did the dreams of young Margaret. Even though her future career as a philanthropist and socialite would span continents and she would become famous for surviving the sinking of the "Titanic," Molly Brown was always proud to be from Hannibal.
Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River, prides itself as "America's Hometown." This book is a photo journey through Hannibal's postwar years as captured through the lens of Otis Howell, news photographer for the Hannibal Courier-Post. The years between the end of World War II and Vietnam were exciting and nostalgic ones. They were the days of Elvis, Howdy Doody, "I Like Ike," Desotos, and Sputnik. In Hannibal, Bud's Golden Cream was a popular spot and people shopped at Silverburg's and Kresge's. A special treat was a Saturday matinee at the Rialto or the Star. KHMO's "Man on the Street" was a regular fixture at Broadway and Main. Hannibal: The Otis Howell Collection recalls people and places from the events of that time through over 220 rare images. Many of these photos have not been seen since they first appeared on the pages of the Hannibal Courier-Post decades ago.
Prepare yourself.This true story strains the limits of human understanding.'Souls Speak' details the astonishing paranormal investigation into the fate of three boys believed lost in the vast caves beneath historic Hannibal, Missouri. A year-long investigation involving three evidential clairvoyants independently identified the boys as the earliest victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, many years before the madman's 1972-1978 Chicago murder spree claimed the lives of thirty-three young men and boys.The boys vanished on May 10, 1967 and their disappearance sparked the largest cave search in US history, the topic of Wingate's previous book, "Lost Boys of Hannibal." It had been believed the boys were victims of a cave collapse, but the astounding preternatural probe documented in "Souls Speak" brings into question the long-believed cause of their disappearances, and asks where their bodies might eventually be found.
Searching for Jim is the untold story of Sam Clemens and the world of slavery that produced him. Despite Clemens’s remarks to the contrary in his autobiography, slavery was very much a part of his life. Dempsey has uncovered a wealth of newspaper accounts and archival material revealing that Clemens’s life, from the ages of twelve to seventeen, was intertwined with the lives of the slaves around him. During Sam’s earliest years, his father, John Marshall Clemens, had significant interaction with slaves. Newly discovered court records show the senior Clemens in his role as justice of the peace in Hannibal enforcing the slave ordinances. With the death of his father, young Sam was apprenticed to learn the printing and newspaper trade. It was in the newspaper that slaves were bought and sold, masters sought runaways, and life insurance was sold on slaves. Stories the young apprentice typeset helped Clemens learn to write in black dialect, a skill he would use throughout his writing, most notably in Huckleberry Finn. Missourians at that time feared abolitionists across the border in Illinois and Iowa. Slave owners suspected every traveling salesman, itinerant preacher, or immigrant of being an abolition agent sent to steal slaves. This was the world in which Sam Clemens grew up. Dempsey also discusses the stories of Hannibal’s slaves: their treatment, condition, and escapes. He uncovers new information about the Underground Railroad, particularly about the role free blacks played in northeast Missouri. Carefully reconstructed from letters, newspaper articles, sermons, speeches, books, and court records, Searching for Jim offers a new perspective on Clemens’s writings, especially regarding his use of race in the portrayal of individual characters, their attitudes, and worldviews. This fascinating volume will be valuable to anyone trying to measure the extent to which Clemens transcended the slave culture he lived in during his formative years and the struggles he later faced in dealing with race and guilt. It will forever alter the way we view Sam Clemens, Hannibal, and Mark Twain.
Missouri has been likened to a “cave factory” because its limestone bedrock can be slowly dissolved by groundwater to form caverns, and the state boasts more than six thousand caves in an unbelievable variety of sizes, lengths, and shapes. Dwight Weaver has been fascinated by Missouri’s caves since boyhood and now distills a lifetime of exploration and research in a book that will equally fascinate readers of all ages. Missouri Caves in History and Legend records a cultural heritage stretching from the end of the ice age to the twenty-first century. In a grand tour of the state’s darkest places, Weaver takes readers deep underground to shed light on the historical significance of caves, correct misinformation about them, and describe the ways in which people have used and abused these resources. Weaver tells how these underground places have enriched our knowledge of extinct animals and early Native Americans. He explores the early uses of caves: for the mining of saltpeter, onyx, and guano; as sources of water; for cold storage; and as livestock shelters. And he tells how caves were used for burial sites and moonshine stills, as hideouts for Civil War soldiers and outlaws—revealing how Jesse James became associated with Missouri caves—and even as venues for underground dance parties in the late nineteenth century. Bringing caves into the modern era, Weaver relates the history of Missouri’s “show caves” over a hundred years—from the opening of Mark Twain Cave in 1886 to that of Onyx Mountain Caverns in 1990—and tells of the men and women who played a major role in expanding the state’s tourism industry. He also tracks the hunt for the buried treasure and uranium ore that have captivated cave explorers, documents the emergence of organized caving, and explains how caves now play a role in wildlife management by providing a sanctuary for endangered bats and other creatures. Included in the book is an overview of cave resources in twelve regions, covering all the counties that currently have recorded caves, as well as a superb selection of photos from the author’s extensive collection, depicting the history and natural features of these underground wonders. Missouri Caves in History and Legend is a riveting account that marks an important contribution to the state’s heritage and brings this world of darkness into the light of day.
