Neosho River, always a lifeline

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opinions

December 18, 2015 - 12:00 AM

Circle March 17 on your calendar. That evening at Iola Public Library Toby Robb, who watches over water purification for Iola, along with a geologist and a wildlife specialist, will discuss the Neosho River and what it means to Allen County and eastern Kansas.
Colleen Dobbins, library assistant, is putting the finishing touches on the program, as well as a display that will open a couple of weeks before the program.
Included will be some button-making dies I have tucked away that were used by an uncle of my father’s.
Soon after the gas boom propelled Iola to industrial prominence in the late 1800s, a button factory opened here with 50 machines to make buttons from mussel shells. The factory bought shells from enterprising fellows who raked mussels — we always called them clams — from the river bed and boiled them in great iron pots to remove their fleshy innards. Occasionally, a “pearl” was found. Demand for the shiny, translucent buttons made from the shells was so great that in no time 50 more machines were added to the factory.
Another personal tie is that my grandfather, Sherman Oliphant, helped build the Marsh Arch bridge that opened in 1932 over the river at the west edge of Humboldt. It is one of the few Marsh designs left in Kansas; others are at Independence and Emporia.
The Neosho, in a greater vein, has been a lifeline for untold thousands of people — probably 100,000s — since the first primitive folks came this way 15,000 years ago. I’ve found two points in the stream that diagnostically date to that time period, with characteristic flutes on both sides of their bases.
Those early inhabitants of Allen County didn’t live long — 35 was old — and had three overriding concerns from birth until the day they died. Theirs was a constant search for food, water and shelter. Streams, such as the Neosho, offered all three. Even in times of extreme drought the Neosho would have been among the last in eastern Kansas to go dry.
The river also had a multitude of edibles — fish, mussels, crawdads, turtles — and was a great draw for wildlife. Buried in the south bank of the mouth of Elm Creek is a large lens of mussel shells that is evidence of an ancient feast.
 Woods, bluffs and the proliferation of loose quartz (river gravel) in the river provided opportunities for shelters, and materials needed daily for utensils of all kinds.

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