GREG WOOD; COURTESY OF MARAMEC SPRING PARK
Above: There are 300 different vacuums on display at the Vacuum Cleaner Museum. Below: Iron from the ironworks was used to make kettles, plows, and other tools.
cifully allowing it to flow as the headwaters of the Meramec River. The spring is the reason the ironworks sprang up, absorbing and transforming the daily power of a hundred million gallons of gushing water into kettles and plows and hoe blades, and pig iron ingots for the railroads. But the remoteness of this Ozark spring was the downfall of the business when transportation costs ate into the profits, and the ironworks went belly up in 1876. The granddaughter of the ironworks founder bought up the land, and when she died, her will instructed: “As this is considered to be the most beautiful spot in Missouri, it is my great hope that you will arrange that it may ever be in private, considerate control, and ever open to the enjoyment of the people.” It’s a refreshing sentiment. Lucy James is an angel. The fish hatchery is a system of waterworks that produces enough trout to feed the habit of thousands of anglers. Its suc-
cessive pools fatten fry into future filets. Shortly after the spring water surfaces from the depths, the stream smacks into a crude boulder dam, forming a pool which overflows into a millstream channel that used to operate the machinery at the ironworks.
Now the millstream moves through the hatchery powerhouse, a tiny brick building that looks like a child’s playhouse, or one of those old, pointy Phillips 66 stations that was only big enough for an attendant and his cash register. The cold spring water moves swiftly through successive trout pools, each pool holding a school of fish.
For a quarter, you can buy a handful of fish food from a dispenser and make the trout whip into a frenzy like a crowd getting new cars from Oprah. I drove through the park, along a path called Stringtown Road, one of the oldest preserved roads in the Ozarks. It’s an ancient appendage to the Wire Road, the trail that eventually became Route 66. Of course, before the Wire Road, these pathways felt the moccasins of Native American tribes, and the boots of Bill Hickok and Jesse and Frank James. In its 200-year recorded history, the road saw houses spring up then vanish when the smelters stopped. Today, the road is nothing more than a path through thick wooded hills, curving around an open mining pit that struggles to heal. Thanks to the saints at the James Foundation, the healing has begun. More than a few saints know about the fruit of the vine, and they smile upon the wineries scattered through the hills and valleys around St. James, one even bearing the name, St. James Winery. On this trip, I took a rain check, vowing to return to these delightful oases, one at a time. Instead, I
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