County of site: Laclede County
Location of park: MO-64 & BSSP 1 Road, west of Lebanon
Marker Erected by: Bennett Springs State Park, Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Marker Text:
BENNETT SPRING STATE PARK
As early as 1916 the Missouri Park Commissioner stocked the branch of Bennett Spring with Rainbow trout. The spring attracted fishermen, picnickers, and sightseers from Lebanon and throughout the state as the word spread, within a few decades, the rainbow trout would help transform Brice from milling community to fishing resort. In 1939, the U.S. Post Office officially changed the name from Brice to Bennett Spring. Mass produced automobiles and a new highway system made leisure travel possible for a growing number of Americans. In 1923, Charles S. Furrow, an Oklahoma dentist, presented the trend and began developing Bennett Spring as a tourist destination. At the same time the State of Missouri securing the land to designate as state parks.
On Dec. 27, 1924, Desephine Rosier Bennett Smith, sold eight and one half acres of land to the state for the creation of Bennett Spring State Park. A few weeks intemeber [sic] brother, William Sherman Bennett, sold more than 500 acres to the state. Most of this land once belonged to the area's original settles, James Brice, and was the site of the town that once bore his name.
Life remained much the same in the area until the early 1930s. In the fall of 1935, The men of Veterans Company 1772 of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) came to Bennett Spring State Park. All the company's 200-250 members had served in the First World War. Before the Great Depression, many of them had been school teachers, preachers, laborers, farmers, clerks, and salesmen. At Bennett Spring, they bunked in wooden barracks, and worked on state park development projects as part of a government work relief program. The National Park Service planned the projects and supervised the men's work.
From November 1933 through December 1937, CCC Co. 1772 completed hundreds of projects, from picking up rubbish, and quarrying stone to laying telephone lines and digging sewers. The former soldiers built cabins, shelters, hatchery structures, and arched stone bridge, and a rustic dining lodge. They also razed many of the buildings that formed the core of the town of Brice.
After Bennett Spring State Park was created, community activities continued, despite the presence of growing numbers of tourists. On June 25, 1939, the Kansas City Star carried a feature story entitled "Ozark Baptizing Interrupts Anglers Sport." The story explained that an active congregation still held Sunday services in a church in Bennett Spring State Park, and trout fishermen often paused to listen to the singing. On the Sunday described in the paper, the church's minister baptized six young people in the waters of the spring branch as fishermen watched.
Even after the state purchased the area, many people still wanted to have their corn and grain ground at the mill. For several years, the state ran the mill on one day each week. But the number of customers dwindled, and eventually the mill was used only for grind feed for the trout in the hatchery. In 1944, the mill burned, leaving the church as the only remanent of the old town.
Bennett Spring State Park honors the legacy of all the former inhabitants of this Ozark landscape -- the native Americans, the pioneers of the 1830s, the residents of the town of Brice, and the men of Veterans Company 1772 of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Their actions have left a permanent imprint on the park, which is enjoyed by many today.