McDonald County Historical Society

by Alberta Anders

As mentioned last week, we have now a copy of Missouri Life, the Magazine of
Missouri in it's first year, March April 1973, I will be quoting from "Big
Sugar Country" by Charles K. Edmonds with Bill Nunn (wonderful photographs
by Bill Nunn and art by Jay Steppleman...."For me, telling people about Big
Sugar Creek country is somewhat like a fellow telling about his best girl.
He wants people to appreciate her, but he doesn't want them to get too
familiar with her and take her away from him."...."About ten miles down the
road from Pineville is Cyclone. This is one of my favorite spots on all of
Big Sugar. Oldtimers say the Indians had a trading post here and that they
buried a horde of silver in the area. Nobody ever found any silver, but the
mummified body of an Indian child, wrapped in deerskin, was found nearby on
the old John Millison farm. It's now in the Smithsonian Institute...Cyclone
is also linked with the so-called legend of Trader's Gold. Some traders
from New Mexico were said to have been heading east with this gold when a
band of robbers attacked them at Cyclone. The traders had supposedly buried
the gold, but they were all killed and the robbers never found it. In the
Forties, some young men from over at Mountain claimed they had a map of the
buried gold. And they spent a lot of time digging for it but apparently
never found anything. --- Just a short distance up Big Sugar from Cyclone is
Penitentiary Bend. Here the creek makes a big horseshoe curve. A gang of
bandits holed up in a cave on a bluff there, west of Powell between Big and
Little Cedar Hollows. Officers nabbed them by slipping across the creek on
small boards, and they were sentenced to prison. That's how the spot got
its name. The bend is about a mile and a half around, and in making its
loop, the Big Sugar flows in every direction except north. In the first
half mile the bluff is so high that you can see for miles in all directions.

For people who like to sort out the trees from the forest, the Big Sugar
Country offers a big variety. Joe Schell, in his "Big Sugar Creek Country",
tells about that as well as anyone. "Along the creek in the bottoms and up
into the hills are a wide variety of beautiful trees----the water oak, post
oak, pin oak, white oak and several other varieties of oak, the giant
sycamore, mulberry, hackberry, wild cherry, wild plum, pine, cedar, elm,
backhaw, chinquapin, walnut and hickory. And there are several species of
maple that spread their autumn colors all over the entire country, along the
creek banks, on hillsides and deep in the hollows........and the
towns---like Bethpage, McNatt, Jane, Jacket and Mountain. None of them are
big. I guess that's one reason I like them. Joe Schell called this Big
Sugar country "a legendary paradise." To my thinking he's not far off. I
don't know of any place like it. And there's one difference in telling
about Big Sugar Country and telling about a favorite girl. Everybody can
appreciate it without taking it away from anybody else."

You can enjoy the 'magazine of Missouri' at the museum next door to U. S.
Post Office on Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Saturday from 9:00
a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Check out our web pages: info@mcdonaldcohistory.org, and
www.McDonald cohistory.org/museum.htm and associated links.. We will meet
again in July at the McDonald County Court House in Pineville. We offerfree tours and invite you to drop in and visit