A Playground for Titans? by Elizabeth Clements

When you climb the knoll at Red Rock Coulee and get your first full view of the surreal valley below, you can’t help but think you’ve landed on Mars or some other sci-fi world. There’s nothing like it anywhere in Alberta. Can you imagine Thor and Wonder Woman engaged in a playful game of “curling” here on a sunny summer’s day? Their powerful hurls could send these spherical-shaped concretions spinning downhill all the way to the distant Sweet Grass Hills of Montana.

I love this quote: “They look like giant, petrified cow patties, strewn across the grasslands in vivid shades of rust and speckled with gnarly bits of multi-coloured lichen. The ones that rest on exposed patches of shale look more like ancient curling rocks used by a mutant race, or maybe extraterrestrial spacecraft that once transported aliens to Earth.”

But beware. These rounded rocks that resemble curling rocks because of their flattened tops and bottoms, minus a handle, can be deceptive when sunshine turns to rain. Hope Johnson, a well-known authority on flora and fauna in the area, advised in her book “that the bedrock of this area is very bentonitic, which means that it is extremely treacherous when wet,” Johnson points out. “If rain threatens, get out fast, and do not visit this area in thawing conditions, nor shortly after any amount of rain.” One experienced traveler, familiar with prairie terrain once the home of dinosaurs, commented “that mudstones made of bentonite turn into a slippery, greenish “dinosaur snot” when wet.” Now that’s quite an image.

Once you get over your amazement at the stunning array of these “sandstone spheroids, they are actually called concretions and were formed in prehistoric seas as layers of sand, calcite and iron oxide collected around a dead organism such as shells, leaves or bones. They grew as the circulating waters deposited more layers, and are harder and more resistant to erosional forces than everything around them, but they aren’t indestructible.”

As the glaciers retreated, some of these boulders were crushed while others remained intact, scattered over a very small area. “Swirling water added more deposits, which stuck to the formations and made them larger, like layers on an onion. The resulting boulders became harder than the surrounding material, so when erosion carved the coulee, the softer material washed away, leaving the red rocks exposed.

Some of the rocks have split open so cleanly you’d think it was done with a laser, not by nature. The shades vary from of deep orange to red, depending on their age and exposure to the environment and the color goes straight through the rock, caused by iron oxide that is part of the rock’s formation. Some broken rocks may even show faint lines or bands, just like trees do, and if you’re lucky, you may see the shape of a fossil or imprint of a fern.

Here’s another beautiful quote: “Artist/photographer Ken Delgarno notes in Badlands: A Geography of Metaphors, Red Rock’s concretions are especially striking because they’re out of whack with the surrounding grasslands, bentonite clay and grass-flecked hills. Seen at dusk or dawn, “the concretions appear like a discovery of strangers, wandering souls, exiled here from another world,” he writes. Delgarno believes the captivating concretions resemble “large dinosaur eggs or alien pods in various states of decay.”

“Concretions could surely stand in for inkblots for Rorschach tests.”

Alberta Parks has designated this Crown land as a natural area. Although there are no gates to close the park, technically, the park is only open from May to September when dry weather conditions are most ideal. The road is not plowed in the winter. There’s a simple sign marking the site, the parking area is small, and there are no amenities available other than a picnic table from which to enjoy the scenic array of boulders scattered over roughly 800 square miles of rumpled, treeless, wind-blown prairie coulees in the south-south-west corner of Alberta—approximately a 30-mile drive from Medicine Hat.

Despite the sometimes harsh climate, wildlife slithers, scampers, leaps and crawls, lopes or soars among these formations while delicate wildflowers dance along the coulee’s crevices, carved by eons of melting ice and spring rains. Cracked or still intact, some of these massive boulders can measure up to 2.5 metres across and can easily seat several people side-by-side. And with time, these concretions just keep growing bigger.

All photographs are taken by Nick Clements Photography

Summertime is perfect for day trips. Bring a snack (for yourself, not the wildlife), a pair of sturdy shoes for hiking, possibly a stick in case you encounter one of those slithering things, and most of all, bring your camera. It’s one of the rare “free” things in life.

August 1 - Colorado Day

 Post by Doris McCraw

writing as Angela Raines

Did you know that August 1 is Colorado Day? On this date in 1876, Ulysses S. Grant signed the paperwork to make Colorado the thirty-eighth state to join the Union. 

North Central Colorado

The journey to statehood was not a smooth one. Initially, what we know of as Colorado was claimed by various countries, and that does not include the native people who already lived here.

Spanish explorers visited the area in the 1500s and claimed the southern part of the state for Spain. The Spanish gave up their claim with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago that had ended the Spanish American War.

France had claimed the Eastern portion of the state which was part of the 1803 Louisana Purchase. Of course, the Spanish disputed that claim. It was allegedly part of the reason for Zebulon Pike's expedition in 1806.

A view of those High Mountains
Photo Property of the author

In 1850 Colorado was part of the Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory. In 1854 Colorado also became part of the Nebraska Territory and the Kansas Territory. Then during the gold rush of 1859 Colorado continued being part of the Kansas Territory and the Jefferson Territory.

Colorado's first 'permanent' settlement was not until 1851 when residents of Taos, New Mexico Territory arrived in the San Luis Valley and founded the town of San Luis.

Now you may wonder why so late. Many thought the Rocky Mountains in Colorado were unpassable because they were so high. Additionally, there were fur trading 'forts' in the 1820s and 30s but these were businesses and few had more than a few families in the fort or nearby.

Replica of Fort Vasquez - one of the Fur Trading Forts
photo property of the author

There are many other little-known facts about my adopted state that would make this post much too long. For those interested, I've included a link from the History Colorado site.

Additonal little known facts about Colorado

So, having celebrated Colorado Springs's 150th birthday on July 31, I'll be celebrating the state's 145th birthday on August 1. Can't pass up these kinds of 'history' parties. 

Until next time, keep reading, writing, and enjoying history.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Telling Stories Where Love & History Meet

Books: Angela Raines Books

Website: Angela Raines - author

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

Post (c) Doris McCraw All Rights Reserved.

Abraham Lincoln: Little-known Facets of his Life

 

    Abraham Lincoln has fascinated me since I was a child. A few years ago, I went on a marathon of reading Lincoln biographies and those of his military and political contemporaries. I learned a lot of interesting facts about the man, outside of his presidency.

Abraham Lincoln on February 9, 1864. 

(Library of Congress; public domain via Wikimedia Commons.)

           It’s common knowledge that Lincoln was a lawyer but, prior to that, he had a number of other jobs. In April 1832, at age twenty-three, he signed up for a 30-day enlistment in the Illinois Militia. The men in his company elected him captain and he ended up re-enlisting. He served a total of 51 days.

      After this, he returned to New Salem, Illinois and resumed his first campaign for the elected office of representative in the Illinois State Legislature. Although he did well in New Salem, he was defeated in the rest of the district and lost the election.

Image via Pinterest

     He entered into a partnership with his friend William F. Berry in January 1833 to purchase a small saloon which they called Berry and Lincoln.  Berry was an alcoholic, and the enterprise did not go well. Lincoln sold his share to Berry in April 1833. Lincoln was left deep in debt and didn’t get that debt paid off until he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

     But May 1833, Lincoln received an appointment as Postmaster of New Salem and continued in this position until the post office was relocated to a different city three years later. During his tenure, he supplemented his income with a variety of jobs including helping farmers with their harvests, splitting rails, clerking in a store, and surveying land for the county. It was also during this period that he began seriously studying the law. He earned his law license in September 1836 and was admitted to the Illinois bar in March 1837 at age twenty-eight. Practicing law became Lincoln’s lifelong career, but his early experiences helped him relate to people from all walks of life. The New Salem State Historic Site preserves the village where he lived before moving to Springfield, Illinois.

     While in New Salem, Lincoln earned a reputation for being an elite wrestler eventually winning the county wrestling championship. According to Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln, the future president once challenged an entire crowd of onlookers after dispatching an opponent in a match. There were no takers.  Lincoln was defeated only once in approximately 300 matches. His record earned him recognition in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Lincoln's Patent Sketches, Wikimedia Commons

     Lincoln was also a tinkerer and inventor. As a young man, he was aboard a steamboat that ran aground on low shoals. He had to help unload the cargo to free it. Subsequently, he developed a design to keep vessels afloat in shallow waters by attaching empty metal air chambers to their sides and later modified it to use four balloons, collapsed accordion-like, attached to the four “corners” of the craft.  If the boat encountered shallow waters, the balloons would be filled with enough air to raise the hull higher than the shoals or sandbar and keep the vessel afloat. For his invention, Lincoln was granted Patent No. 6,469 in 1849. He is the only president to hold a patent.

     According to accounts of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and many other contemporaries, Lincoln was an avid cat-lover. He had two cats while he was in the White House, Tabby and Dixie, and he would also bring in strays. There are some reports that he fed Tabby and Dixie on the dining table, a practice his wife did not approve of.

Lincoln family: From left to right: Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert Lincoln, Tad Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln

By Currier & Ives [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

     Lincoln and his wife had a great interest in psychic phenomena. During his first term, their son, Willie, died of a typhoid-like disease and the Lincolns were overcome with grief. Mrs. Lincoln convinced her husband to hold séances at the White House to communicate with Willie and another son who had died prior to his presidency. It is believed that Abraham attended at least two of the séances, but didn’t find them gratifying.

      As a theatre-lover, Lincoln was a fan of actor John Wilkes Booth. Before going to Ford’s Theatre in the evening to see Our American Cousin on April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed legislation creating the U.S. Secret Service. The original mission of the law enforcement agency was to combat widespread currency counterfeiting.

     The president was guarded around-the-clock by one member of a four-man security unit. A new bodyguard, John Parker, was assigned to protect the president at the theatre but he went missing. No one knows for sure where Parker was, but he had a reputation for being unreliable, including drinking and frequenting a “house of ill repute” while on duty, according to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

Shooting of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln

.Library of Congress / Reuters

     That evening, John Wilkes Booth assassinated the president. Lincoln died the next day. According to the report of Ward Hill Lamon, one of the president’s friends, Lincoln had dreamt of his assassination.

     It was not until 1901, after Garfield and McKinley were killed, that the Secret Service was assigned to protect the president.

   Ann Markim

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Last of the Anglo-Normans - the loss of The White Ship

 

On November 25th, 1120, The White Ship was wrecked in a storm and sank in the English Channel. This terrible accident claimed over 300 lives and turned the course of English medieval history, since one of the victims was William 'the Atheling', seventeen years old and the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England and his queen Matilda, who had died two years before.

The White Ship was a modern vessel, a sturdy cog owned by Thomas FitzStephen, who was also on board, but the channel crossing from Normandy to England is treacherous, especially in winter. Henry's ship had already left Barfleur, on the north-western coast of France, in daylight, but when Fitzstephen's ship eventually sailed, after being loaded with more casks of wine, it was night. Worse, everyone on the ship was drunk. The ship struck a rock off Barfleur off the coast of north-western France and was wrecked. Only a butcher called Berthold from Rouen, on board to chase up payment, survived because the ramskins he was wearing saved him from exposure. Prince William and many of his friends, all young nobles, were drowned. Chroniclers of the time said that Thomas FitzStephen, knowing that Prince William was lost, allowed himself to drown rather than face King Henry.

At court, none of the barons dare tell the king. A child was finally sent with the terrible news. Henry fainted and afterwards was said never to smile again.

Henry, stricken with grief, also afraid for his crown. His other legitimate child, named Matilda like her mother, was a daughter and in the Middle Ages women were not thought capable of ruling without male help. The traditional role of a queen was as a help-meet of the king and an intermediary for petitioners seeking mercy from the king.

Henry was terrified of the prospect of no obvious male succession to the English crown, won by his father William of Normandy at the battle of 1066 - the more so perhaps because he owed his own title of king to an 'accident' in the New Forest in August 1100 when his older brother, William Rufus, the King of England, was killed by an arrow while out hunting. Accident or assassination? It is still unclear but the younger brother, landless Henry, wasted no time in seizing the royal treasury and securing his position.

The death of William Rufus had favored him but the sinking of The White Ship threw his dynastic aims into turmoil. He attempted to extract promises of loyalty from his barons to his daughter Matilda, but some of the barons favored Henry's favorite nephew Stephen and when King Henry died in 1135, Stephen was crowned king of England in his place.

Matilda and her supporters saw this as a betrayal and both factions fought for their claims over England for over 20 years.

Had William not been traveling on The White Ship all those years ago in 1120, if he had lived and succeeded his father, England would have seen a different line of Kings - Anglo-Normans instead of the later Angevins. No Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, no Richard the Lionheart, no King John - all descended from Matilda's marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou.

In my medieval fiction, I tend not to touch on the royal courts. I mention kings in passing, as being distant from my characters' lives - as in my novels "The Snow Bride" and "A Summer Bewitchment". There is more courtly intrigue in my novellas "Mistress Angel" and "Amice and the Mercenary".

Lindsay Townsend

New Release — Summer Smoke (Gold Camp Dreams Book 2) by Vella Munn

 

Nothing means more to Katharine Beechman than her two beloved daughters, Mary and Sally. At ages five and three, they are her world—her reason for being. After her harsh past, she doesn’t need or want a man in her life. She knows better than to trust one. 

As manager of the Eagle Canyon’s Yuba gold mine Daniel Harman’s life is marked by the ultimate responsibility for every miner’s safety. The success—or failure—of the Yuba mine rests solely on Daniel’s shoulders. Determined to be the man everyone depends on, as he has been since his difficult childhood, he refuses to show any weakness. And there’s certainly no room in his heart for a woman, let alone a family.

But he never intended to fall in love with Katharine’s sweet and innocent daughters. He melts every time they laugh or smile. As for their serious, independent mother—she has awakened a need deep in him he has always denied. Can he risk telling her that he recognizes the loneliness in her? A loneliness he understands all too well.

As Katharine and Daniel take a chance on revealing their emotions, the past she has fought so hard to put behind her returns with a vengeance. There’s no escaping the danger in the SUMMER SMOKE...

EXCERPT:

“He has black lung. Miner’s consumption.”

Her own breath suddenly gone, she pressed a cool wet fist to her forehead. “I was afraid it was something like that. How do you know? You said you weren’t the one to ask.”

He spun toward her. A sense of isolation slipped over her. It was just the two of them, a couple of crazy people looking for a dog that wanted nothing to do with them. Getting to know each other. Maybe learning things about themselves.

“Dr. Piper told me,” he said.

“I shouldn’t be surprised. There isn’t much in the way of secrets here.”

“Like Dwight saying something he shouldn’t have.”

There it was. Another lesson acknowledged. “So you heard.”

“It was impossible not to. I’m sorry.”

“So am I. Like we agree, secrets don’t exist here.”

“Such as accusations of murder.”

     

THE BAGNELL DAM OFMISSOURI

 

90 years ago this year, The Bagnell Dam at Lake of the Ozarks was completed, creating one of the largest recreational lakes in the U.S., boasting a surface area of 55,000 acres,
stretching 92 miles from end to end, and over 1,150 miles of shoreline.

“…built by the Union Electric Light and Power Company of St. Louis (now AmerenUE) between 1929 and 1931. Bagnell Dam, named for the closest town when construction first started, is a 148-foot tall, 2,543 foot-long concrete gravity dam with a 520-foot long spillway, and a 511-foot long power station. The Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation designed and engineered the dam construction on the Osage River at a cost of more than $30 million.  At the time of Bagnell Dam’s construction, the Osage River valley was lush and fertile. Damming of the Osage River caused the river to snake back on itself, submerging the timber and farm land. The project also caused the eventual destruction of Old Linn Creek, then the Camden County seat.” [www.sos.mo.gov/archives]

Started just before The Great Depression hit, it’s purpose was power – electricity, to be exact. But it also provided jobs. Lots of jobs. For construction, a railroad, a dredge for gravel, a concrete plant, and a sawmill were built. The town of Bagnell, which no longer exists, housed some of the more than 20,000 workers who took part in the massive project. 

Completed in August of 1931, The Bagnell Dam is a tourist attraction in an area full of them.

Fun Facts (from Ameren Missouri) 
- The Bagnell Dam was the largest - and last - major dam in the U.S. to be built with private investment.

- The Bagnell Dam actually got its name from a railroad man who formed his own town and then named it after himself. William Bagnell platted a town bearing his name on June 30, 1883.

- Bagnell Dam is one-half mile long, rising 148 feet high from bedrock. That’s comparable to a building 12 stories high and seven blocks long. It holds back 600 billion gallons of water.

- Ameren Missouri invested $53 million in upgrades at Bagnell Dam in 2017 and 2018, including 67 post-tensioned anchors and more than 66 million pounds of new concrete to weigh down the dam and secure it into the bedrock. The project created more than 200 construction jobs and an estimated $40 million in spending in the area.

- In a typical year, the Osage Energy Center produces more than 500 million kilowatt hours of electricity - enough to supply the needs of nearly 42,000 average households.

- By using the natural energy of falling water, the Osage Energy Center saves our nation about one million barrels of oil or one million tons of coal each year.

- Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, covering 86 square miles in four counties.

- Lake of the Ozarks is a little more than 100 feet deep at its deepest point. The lake level reading is the height of the surface of the lake above sea level. The full pool elevation of the lake is 660 feet above sea level.

Photos of construction Courtesy of The Missouri State Archives
Photo of the completed dam by LakeExpo.com