Leslie and David's Wanderings: 11 September 2020 George Washington Carver NM

With the rain finally clearing out and the sun poking out between the clouds, we decided that it would be our best opportunity to visit the National Monument. We knew from the website that the visitor center was not open but that the grounds and walking path were. So we found the park film on YouTube and watched it to learn about the life of George Washington Carver. Born into slavery (His mother Mary was “owned” by Moses and Susan Carver) in 1864 on the Carver homestead in southern Missouri, he lived a life full of learning. His mother, sister and him were stolen from the Carvers toward the end of the Civil War by raiders. The Carvers enlisted a Union Scout to find them, but he was only able to find infant George who was suffering from whooping cough. His mother Mary and his sister had disappeared. With the end of the war, the Carvers took George and his half brother Jim into their home and raised them. George being a sickly child was not able to help with the field chores so he worked around the house and spent his time exploring the woods learning about the plants that lived there. In the 1870s at the age 12, he left the Carvers and walked 8 miles to the nearest Negro school where he enrolled. A local couple took him into their home in exchange for helping with the chores. He graduated from high school and, after doing odd jobs to earn enough money, went to the University of Iowa where he initially majored in art before his teachers convinced him to change to botany due to his extensive knowledge of plants and minerals. After graduating with his Masters, he became a professor at the Tuskegee Institute where he taught botany and did research on the uses of plants for 43 years. He developed over 500 uses for peanuts and 300 uses for sweet potatoes and led the effort to convince Negro sharecroppers to switch over to growing them instead of cotton as their cash crop. Loving art and painting his whole life, he developed and patented techniques for creating over 500 paint pigments using natural plant materials and minerals. He was the “Plant Whisper” of his time. George Washington Carver was world renown and respected. During WW1 he developed an alternative for oil using soybeans. When he passed away in 1943, at the age of 81, congress authorized the dedication of a National Monument to be centered on the homestead where he was born. In 1951, the national park service acquired 210 acres of the former Carver homestead and was donated the remaining 30 acres in the 1980s. The log home where George was born, along with the Caver’s log home were destroyed by a tornado in the 1880s. The home that the Cavers built after the tornado was still on the property but had been moved from its original location in the 1920s. Although George visited the Carvers and their new home, he did not live there.

With the visitor center closed, we walked the nature trail through the woods where George played as a child and learned about his life. It was a beautiful day for a 1 mile stroll through the Ozark woods. David later called the park and asked if they could send us a sticker with the stamp for our passport book.

Following the NM, we decided to visit the Grand Waterfall in Joplin, the #1 tourist destination in Joplin. We found the falls and took a few pictures, watch the kids jumping off the falls into the water pool below before heading back to the Wanderer for dinner.