Since I was not born until the 1960s, I can only imagine the World War II years, the ongoing war effort, the rationing, and the historical events that resonate to the present.
It may be because it was before my time or because that era was a pivotal time in American history but World War II and the war years have long intrigued me. The Camp Crowder period in Neosho has always fascinated me with the changes that it brought to the area and the impact it had on the everyday life of our small town. Many years ago, the late Harold Welcher who ran the Southside Grocery on the Square told me that the change in Neosho before Camp Crowder and after the camp was established was like “night and day.” 

As a student at Crowder College, I found the physical reminders and few remaining buildings from the camp years interesting enough that I wrote a series of articles about Camp Crowder for the campus newspaper. Although years have passed, my interest has never waned and that is why a recent online discovery was a major find.

The Library of Congress has an online collection of photographs called “American Memory” that feature people, places, and events of our nation’s history. Many of the pictures are available for use, a boon for a writer who often writes about history. On a recent day as I searched through the site looking for some photographs to illustrate another article, I stumbled across a collection of photographs from Neosho and Newton County, circa 1942.

Taken by a photographer named John Vachon, the black and white images reveal the world that was. Photographs of the Neosho square, the courthouse, the area just outside the Army camp, area residents, farmhouses, and more fuel my imagination.
Some of the more poignant pose former owners outside their farmhouses that are now marked with no trespassing signs, property of the United States Government. Many other photographs of other Missouri locations are part of the collection, but it is the images of Neosho that most capture my interest.

If nothing more, the photographs serve to fuel my imagination, to give me a clearer picture of that era in local history. Images of the faces, of businesses, of the area allow me to imagine the past as an overlay on the present. Some places are not familiar and I wonder where they may have been located. Several photographs feature The Meadows Curve Night Club but I wonder where the Meadows Curve, a location unfamiliar to me, was located.

Vachon was an American photographer whose first photography worked demonstrated the depths of poverty in the nation during the Depression. By 1942, he had become a photographer for the Office of War Information, the position that brought him to Neosho.  Although he later worked for both Life and Look magazines, Vachon’s lasting legacy is the images that preserve the past.

I could — and have — spent hours poring over the vintage photographs of Neosho, making connections between 1942 and today. As anyone who knows me can attest, history is a vital interest of mine. I see the past as a foundation for the present and with that in mind, I am fascinated with these photographs as windows to another era in Neosho’s rich history.