06/11/2026
Some park history. Alley was a state park from 1924 (?) until becoming part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways.
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Here’s an article about Alley Spring State Park in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1928, just a few years after the park was opened. This article was written before Highway 106 had been built, so the park was hard to access. The best way to do so was to come down Highway 19 and make your way through Angeline and out Horse Hollow.
April 15th, 1928
Alley Spring Offers Variety of Interests
State Park in Ozark Hills of Shannon County Comprises 427 Acres.
Alley Spring State Park is in Shannon County, sixteen miles north of Birch Tree, or it can be reached from Summersville by traveling fifteen miles eastward on a county road. Birch Tree is on U. S. Highway No. 60 and Summersville is on State Highway No. 17. Both are first-class roads. Still another way is to go down Horse Hollow from State Highway No. 19 at a point about six miles north of Eminence, the county seat.
This park contains 427 acres of land and cost $31,500. It is a very interesting and picturesque place, located in a secluded spot along Jack’s Fork, an ideal bass fishing stream. The spring itself flows from the base of a circular bluff and furnishes about 50,000,000 gallons of water daily. The stream formed by the spring runs for a quarter mile through a pretty well grassed camp ground and thence into Jack’s Fork.
Just below the spring an old grist mill, perhaps half a century old, stands. This was used before the park became state property as a community grist mill. Now the state has converted the mill race into a power plant, from which electricity is generated to make light for the camp ground. A rustic store building, several cabins for park employees, an old church and a beautiful grove of walnut trees surround the park headquarters. Park Keeper Dewell is very active in showing visitors about. Especially is he keen to show up Branson’s Cave, about two miles distant, and going back into the hills a considerable distance. As it is very easy to become lost in the winding passages of this cave, it is suggested that you do not make the journey without a guide.
For Camping and Fishing
Keith McCone, state game and fish commissioner, is building at Alley Spring Park a rural retreat to which city folks are coming in great numbers each year to camp, fish and tramp the hills. Road conditions into Alley Spring Park are not yet the best, but one can make it in almost any kind of weather. While rough, the trip to Alley Spring, down Horse Hollow from State Highway No. 19, is suggested as the best way of approach. The park grounds are well grassed, shady, and range along the spring branch. A very pretty rustic bridge across this branch has been completed recently by the State Game and Fish Department. Other improvements are contemplated. Trout and bass are plentiful around the park.
The park here is not as large as some of the other state owned public recreation grounds, but it is certainly isolated, back in the wild woods, and provides a very peaceful and quiet setting. The circular bluff, forming two sides of the park grounds, turn up several hundred feet. Jack’s Fork Creek lies to the south and the low-lying hills range off to the west. The country is heavily forested with oak and cedar.
In connection with the opening of Alley Spring Park to the public the traveler here learns of the abandoning of the big timber project started fifty years ago by Capt. J. F. White, the man whose energy and inspiration brought much activity into Shannon County. Capt. White has been dead several years, but down around Alley Spring they yet recall his dominating spirit. He made his millions by having the towering pine removed from the surrounding hills.
Capt. White first came to Brushy Creek, near the park, mule-back, in 1879. He was from Youngstown, Ohio. After a couple of years of cruising the country, sizing up the pine timber and placing a value on it, he persuaded the Grandins to come from Tidewater, Pa., and together they bought some acres of land in Shannon, Ripley, Carter, Wayne and Reynolds counties. In a few years they became and have always maintained the reputation of being the oldest and largest timber operators in the Southern Missouri Ozarks.
Big Lumber Producer
Starting in 1881 and during a twenty-five-year period, the White lumber people cut more than 900,000,000 board feet of pine and made it into pine lumber at their Grandin mill. In 1909 they moved this mill to West Eminence, only a few miles from Alley Spring Park, and during a ten-year period cut more than 135,000,000 feet of pine lumber. They sold the mill in 1919 to Southern Timber operators, who have been having a rather hard time financially because of falling lumber prices and because the remaining pine was isolated spots, badly scattered and costly to bring to the mills.
Down Horse Hollow on your way to Alley Springs Park you follow the right of way of their old logging roads most of the distance. You also pass several small mill settlements yet remaining. At West Eminence the old mill yet stands, as do about 125 houses, a big frame store and office building, all modern even to running water, bathrooms, electric lights and steam heat. These improvements cost $150,000. Now they are going to wreck and ruin as a result of the ravages of time.
Just before you go into Alley Springs Park you cross a right of way of the Salem, Winona and Southern Railroad, built by these lumber people and yet being used. However, application has been made to the government to permit the company to disband train service, tear up the tracks and retire. The railroad has been operated for forty years and has hauled out of the hollows millions of dollars’ worth of pine timber. No doubt it has served its time.
