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[SDC#1fan]

one thing i keep reading in this thread is about the "tower" but i am pretty sure that it is sup to be a shaft to the surface and they had to make it look like a tower from the outside to hide it. So that would explain y the prisoners are climbing it and y there were rocks falling down from it also.

[History Buff]

^But it looks like the structure on the top of every mine I ever saw in the Rockies.

^^It could be that those were actually pieces of the ceiling falling, and they finally had to fix it.  The net was just a temporary fix.

[rubedugans]

To be fair, I will share an exterior shot of FITH from 82' since most people want to ride that one. Much LIke FM, The exterior has undergone little change in the last 30 yrs.

[Dragon Dad]

Much LIke FM, The exterior has undergone little change in the last 30 yrs.

Hello, just found this wonderful site and am trying to catch up on past posts.  I was searching the Flooded Mine messages for an answer to a nagging question about why/when the exterior of the FM has changed so much.  First, some context... My first visit to SDC as a child was the year before FITH was opened (1970?) and the family returned each summer for several years through at least 1977.  Sadly I didn't return until my honeymoon in 1992 and have since been back several times with my own children.

Back in the 70's, the FM exterior resembled a stoney hill top with a sole wooden tower which pumped running water into a long wooden sluice.  I cannot find my honeymoon pics, but in all my pics with my kids, the FM exterior now looks more like a man-made structure made up a collection of buildings and ventilation pipes.   I've always wondered when and why the change took place.

And, for the record, I'll pick the FM over FITH

[rubedugans]

I have a few then and now FM pics if I can get to them today

[rubedugans]

Here is an old photo of the "hill" and showing the buildings built up around

[okiebluegrass]

Great Pictures as always Rube.

[rubedugans]

Thanks that is 1978 and 2013. I have one more from this ride and a few other then and now photos.

[KBCraig]

Some of the structure (not sure which, in that picture) was built for the avalanche/cave-in.

[rubedugans]

Here is another from my last trip:

[KBCraig]

Here is another from my last trip:

The tall tower on the left is for the foam rockslide, right?

[rubedugans]

Yep the big wooden structure .

[clancomyn]

Oh, the story I read somewhere about the burning of the old town of Maramos by the Baldknobbers was just hogwash. It is a great, romantic story, but with little or no basis in fact. Baldknobbers disbanded by the time the little town burned. Likely locals burned the abandoned buildings because they didn't want a "furriner" from Canada having success at the cave. Lynch originally from the Great White North! The whole thing is wrapped up in local folklore and has little historical truth to it, but it was a great little story to loosely base a ride at a theme park on. Just like the diving bell treasure of silver is loosely based on the Yoakum silver dollar minting story of regional folklore. Yoakum's had a "silver mine" at the junction of the James and White Rivers in Stone County at present day Cape Fair given to them by friendly Indians...Although the guy who ran the Lost Silver Mine play in the early 1980s at the site of the present Wal Mart at Branson West claimed the lost mine was located on that property. So, local history and folklore are a bit mixed up with the true treasure of the area "milking them silly tourists of all their dollars!"

The Yocum Silver Dollar story was "de-mythologized" by historian and MO state archivist Lynn Morrow in the 1980s:

http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/v8/n11/sp85d.htm

Vance Randolph, among others, documents the "cover story" for the mine, that of Bread Tray Mountain near present-day Lampe. In that story, the Quawpaw Indians who massacred the Spanish treasure hunters were not friendly at all.

The Bread Tray's ghost story was very easy to use as a way to keep nosy neighbors away from the Yocum's distilling operation of peach brandy to sell to the Delaware Indians at Delaware Town on modern-day Highway 14, just west of Nixa. The Yocums would then melt down the Federal specie paid to the Indians, and make their famous "silver dollars".

T.

[palallin]

Here's a bit of sparkle on the Yocum story. 

When I lived in the area--'67 - '72--I lived not far at all from Bread Tray Mountain (in Baxter), and a family friend, with whom I often stayed, lived under the shadow of the mountain.  At the intersection of Highway H (which, IIRC is Old 86) and the side road H-18, there was the remains of a run-down farm house/shack, a lot of junk cars ('20s - '50s) and an expanse of over-grown, fallow fields leading right up to the foot fo the moutnain.  There lived a pair of old man, brothers, by the name of Yocum.  Our family friend told us to be wary of them, as they had a reputation of being reclusive and unfriendly, and they were supposed to be running a still.  No mention that I remember was ever made of Yocum dollars, but the mountain was generally considered to be haunted by the locals.

The last time I went by there (about 3 years ago), the junk cars were long gone and the shack had fallen into complete ruin, but the fields were still untended, just more covered with brush and trees.  I have no idea what happened to the family friend who lived up the road (long dead, I suppose), but his place had fallen into ruin as well, and his boat dock down on the lake is gone.

Funny how the legends and the people persisted so long.

Oh, BTW, I should vote:  FM is the one for me.  I do not like coasters, and I have always considered FITH to be an interloper than ruined the SDC that I loved as a kid.  I was stunned when I saw the first ads for it the year after we left the area. 

[clancomyn]

Here's a bit of sparkle on the Yocum story. 

When I lived in the area--'67 - '72--I lived not far at all from Bread Tray Mountain (in Baxter), and a family friend, with whom I often stayed, lived under the shadow of the mountain.  At the intersection of Highway H (which, IIRC is Old 86) and the side road H-18, there was the remains of a run-down farm house/shack, a lot of junk cars ('20s - '50s) and an expanse of over-grown, fallow fields leading right up to the foot fo the moutnain.  There lived a pair of old man, brothers, by the name of Yocum.  Our family friend told us to be wary of them, as they had a reputation of being reclusive and unfriendly, and they were supposed to be running a still.  No mention that I remember was ever made of Yocum dollars, but the mountain was generally considered to be haunted by the locals.

The last time I went by there (about 3 years ago), the junk cars were long gone and the shack had fallen into complete ruin, but the fields were still untended, just more covered with brush and trees.  I have no idea what happened to the family friend who lived up the road (long dead, I suppose), but his place had fallen into ruin as well, and his boat dock down on the lake is gone.

Funny how the legends and the people persisted so long.

Oh, BTW, I should vote:  FM is the one for me.  I do not like coasters, and I have always considered FITH to be an interloper than ruined the SDC that I loved as a kid.  I was stunned when I saw the first ads for it the year after we left the area. 

Outstanding! Thank you so much for sharing that story about The Bread Tray. I've been meaning to get down there for some time and investigate the mountain before it is swallowed up in housing developments.

Randolph not only mentions the Bread Tray in Ozark Magic and Folklore, but also has a farily lengthy version of the tale in Stiff As a Poker, one of his collections of short stories.