Poplar Bluff’s city government makes multiple appearances this weekend. The city found mystery money in its accounts, stepped up a fight against houseboats and signed contracts for new apartments.
Saturday
100 years ago
July 6, 1924 — No issues available.
75 years ago
July 6, 1949
• The Poplar Bluff City Council has discovered thousands of dollars it didn’t know it had.
The discovery was made by former treasurer Olivia S. Brown and her recently-elected replacement, Laura Freeman. Both women appeared before the council and said announced the city has an extra $17,500 in a reserve fund, and no records of its origins.
Brown first discovered the money when she took over the office and, lacking documentation for it, put it in reserve. It was rediscovered while going over the records with Freeman.
After considerable discussion of the money’s possible origins, the finance committee was instructed to seek a cost estimate for an audit.
50 years ago
July 6, 1974
• State Treasurer James Spainhower announced two Butler County banks will receive $520,000 as part of the Missouri Model for the Investment of Inactive State Funds.
Commerce Bank in Poplar Bluff is receiving $420,000, and the State Bank of Fisk gets $100,000. The allocation’s goal is “keeping the state’s money within Missouri whenever possible,” Spainhower said.
Sunday
100 years ago
July 7, 1924
• Authorities believe they’ve arrested one of the culprits in the recent Bank of Vanduser robbery, and found multiple stolen cars in the process.
Wesley Wilson, 27, of Royalton, Illinois is being held incommunicado and without bond in Benton on charges of auto theft and bank robbery. Wilson was nabbed during a raid on a “questionable” resort near Royalton, which turned up stolen cars and license plates from Southeast Missouri and southern Illinois. Wilson was extradited to Missouri on the car theft charges and re-arrested in connection with the June 27 bank robbery in Vanduser. Four suspects seized almost $2,000 in the heist. Wilson was positively identified by a bank clerk.
Police are confident the rest of the gang will be apprehended soon.
75 years ago
July 7, 1949
• Thirteen business owners on South Fifth Street lambasted the Poplar Bluff Police Department for “very incompetent handling” of recent floods.
In a signed statement submitted to the Daily American Republic, the merchants said yesterday’s heavy rain put the street and sidewalks underwater. They asked police to close it off after waves from traffic sent water into their stores, but got no response. One businessman finally blocked the street himself by parking his truck across it and was ticketed.
50 years ago
July 7, 1974 — No issues available.
Monday
100 years ago
July 8, 1924
• The Poplar Bluff City Council took a conflict over houseboats into its own hands last night, and passed an ordinance forbidding them from anchoring on the Black River within city limits.
Land-dwelling residents have long protested the boats “present an unsightly view of the city,” according to The Daily Republican, but city police lack jurisdiction over the Black River. The waterway is a federal stream under the authority of the War Department, however, federal authorities largely confine themselves to the Mississippi River.
“The Council takes the position that if the War Department has authority over the stream they will not interfere in a matter of this kind,” the paper said.
75 years ago
July 8, 1949
• “Reporters on the Daily American Republic thought they had seen everything but now they are ready to start all over,” the paper proclaimed. The sight that so rattled them? A cucumber.
The “dill pickle in the raw” brought in by C.C. Burns, resident of Highway 60 west, was 12.5 inches long, 11.5 in diameter and weighed 3 lbs. Burns said he didn’t do anything new in his garden this year, but he has several cucumbers almost this size.
50 years ago
July 8, 1974
• The Poplar Bluff Housing Authority recently signed $1.3 million in construction contracts for public housing: a four-story apartment complex on North Second Street and community building for the elderly on North Main and Relief streets. The latter is the first structure in a planned 30-apartment complex.