For people from Southeast Missouri, Louis P. Houck looms larger than life. Legends surround this man who has been deemed the father of Southeast Missouri.
Dr. Joel Rhodes, a professor in the history department of Southeast Missouri State University, let residents peer behind the curtain and see the actual man during a presentation Friday at the Black River Coliseum.
Rhodes is the author of “A Missouri Railroad Pioneer, the Life of Louis Houck.”
While Houck did not build a great railroad, he did manage to get 500 miles of track laid, through passion and sheer determination, according to Rhodes’ discussion. Houck created the means for Southeast Missouri to make use of nearly useless swampland, and access valuable timber, according to historians.
Houck wore many hats — lawyer, journalist, historian, railroad man, businessman. He was also the president of the Board of Regents for what would become Southeast Missouri State University.
When it came to the railroads, he was often called an ‘accidental’ railroad man.
Rhodes assured his listeners that because Houck was a very savvy businessman, nothing that man ever did was accidental. Rhodes spent more than two years with Houck through his research on the book.
Houck was always working a deal, according to Rhodes, even in matters of the heart.
Mary Hunter Giboney’s family was a land-owning family, one of the two largest landowners in Southeast Missouri. Houck was certainly courting someone who was out of his league in the financial sense, Rhodes explained.
Houck was poor in cash, but Mary, who became his wife, was rich in land.
Houck was good at using other people’s money, Rhodes explained, and he was quite adept at never paying his debts. He felt it was more important to have money than to have good credit.
Houck was not much of a railroad man, and his lines, called Houck Roads, were ultimately poorly constructed, according to the presentation. He completely underestimated the amount of time and effort it was going to take to build the railroads. He believed his workers, Irishmen and African Americans, could lay one mile of track per day.
He also believed he learned all he believed he needed to know about railroad construction by reading, but was wrong. Riding a Houck train was an ‘enter at your own risk” thing, according to Rhodes.
The materials he used were scraps, Rhodes said. If there was a cypress tree stump in the way, no problem. Houck just had his men put those railroad ties right over the top of it. Even the laying of the railroad ties was not regulation. Some were 8 inches apart; others were 8 feet, he said.
Houck did not want to waste money on passenger cars, Rhodes explained, so he bought flatbeds, and merely nailed wooden chairs to them. It was like riding the log flume at an amusement park, according to Rhodes. It was not unusual for the passengers to be hit by tree limbs.
And even if a passenger could manage to stay in his seat, the entire train might not. Derailments were frequent on Houck Lines, records show. One of the Missouri Railroad commissioners was later quoted in the Southeast Missourian, “that lives are not lost of persons injured, thereby, is due more to luck than managements.”
Eventually, Houck filed for bankruptcy. Despite his troubles, he was also instrumental in the creation of Southeast Missouri State University.
Other information Rhodes shared about Houck included that while his accomplishments might have been gigantic, his physicality was not too impressive. The man only stood 5 foot, 8 inches and was known for being extremely cheap. Houck had a very heavy German accent, being a second-generation American.
The presentation was organized by the Daughters of the Revolution chapter in Poplar Bluff as part of Missouri’s Bicentennial celebration. The group plans on having a program each month to commemorate this event.