The picture is from the AmerenUE website, showing construction of the hydroelectric plant which created the Lake of the Ozarks. Bagnell Dam was built between 1929 and 1931. During that period more than 20,000 people helped in some way to construct the dam. One of them was my grandfather's half-brother. He died on the site in February 1931, a few days before his 45th birthday. My grandfather undertook the sad responsibility to bring his brother's body back to Illinois for burial.Although I've known pretty much my whole life that Great-Uncle Jim died at Bagnell Dam, it wasn't until yesterday that it occurred to me to visit the Missouri Secretary of State's digital archives and pull up his death certificate. Cause of death was given as cellulitis of right leg and thigh, followed by multiple abscesses. My understanding was that he got cement poisoning.
He wasn't the only person who died during the project. I went through death certificates for Miller County for 1929, 1930 and 1931 (through May) and opened each one that was obviously a male. This is not a comprehensive list of casualties connected to the dam construction. But these people were employed by the project and they died in Miller County, Missouri, during the time frame.
Jess Brown, March 16, 1931; hotel fire.
Harry Erwin, March 26, 1931; meningitis.
A.L. Handy, January 5, 1931; car accident.
Quintin Keaveney, January 5, 1931; crushed to death by a steam shovel.
James Daugherty, February 22, 1931; cellulitis and abscesses.
Duke Thompson, May 5, 1930; struck by scale being lowered by a crane.
Claude Sparkman, March 7, 1931; pneumonia.
Lenard Bolen, September 2, 1930; skull crushed by ? box (looks like "whole box" to me) -- at any rate, an accident.
Sam Busley, December 3, 1930; erysipelas.
Orville Dunnaway, August 17, 1930; drowning.
Stillman Henry, March 3, 1930; meningitis (His occupation is given as laborer although dam construction is not specified. But he was from western Missouri and was treated by a physician in Bagnell, Mo., for 10 days before he died.)
Henry Hughes, October 21, 1930; fell 75 feet from a gravel plant.
Howard Pierce, May 31, 1930; fell 50 feet from a concrete chute.
And then the very worst of it all. A fire broke out in one residence in Victor City, a damsite community containing a few merchants, houses and tents where some workers and their families made camp. On October 4, 1930, the tent of Guy and Fay Medlock caught fire. The canvas had been soaked in oil to make it waterproof. The Medlocks' little girls, Mary Della and Maryland (aka Marylin) Ruth, died. Mary was 4 and her little sister was 22 months old. Guy was badly burned trying to rescue his daughters and he died at Jefferson City a month later.
Here's a clever little book with the story of Bagnell Dam. It's an adventure in eye-hand coordination but if you keep your mouse in the upper-right-hand corner, you should be able to get the pages to turn.