Devil’s Elbow in Pulaski County has longbeen recognized as one of the most scenicspots in Missouri. It is a wonderful placeto drive through on the original (1926)Route 66 and some 1929 pavement. Therewere plans in the 1930s to cover the Elbowwith water from a proposed dam nearArlington. Thankfully, that plan was notcarried out and the hamlet and river arestill there for us to enjoy today. Wanting toknow more of its history but also to get asense of place, we talked to long time resi-dents Jiggs and Dorothy Miller. After morethan six decades of residency, they have agood sense of the place.

OSG: Mr. Miller, where and whenwere you born?Jiggs: Dixon, Missouri, 1923.OSG: What were your parents’ names?Jiggs: Enoch and Cora Miller.OSG: And where were they born?Jiggs: Dad was born in Franks Switch.Ever hear of it?OSG: Frank’s Switch? Yes.Jiggs: And my mother was born inVienna.OSG: When did you come to Devil’sElbow?Jiggs: 1945.OSG: And why?Jiggs: I got married to Dorothy and herDad put me to work down here.OSG: How did you two meet?Jiggs: Dorothy’s dad had a dance halldown here and that’s where I met her.Dorothy: He built a dance hall or nick-elodeon. We slept upstairs over thedance hall for awhile before we builtthis [house.]Jiggs: I always tease Dorothy that therewere so many thousands of troops thatcame through here during World WarII and she didn’t get one. OSG: She was waiting for you.Jiggs: Yeah. Both of my sisters got guysand married them, one from Californiaand one from Pennsylvania. And someof my girl friends got GIs and marriedthem. I went overseas and came backand she still wasn't married.Dorothy: My dad came down here[from Edina, Missouri.] I stayed upthere for my last year in high schoolbefore I came. He had a garage,Chevrolets and John Deeres, and busi-ness wasn’t good so he left because hecouldn’t get any more cars for thegarage.Jiggs: He came down and bought the[Devil’s Elbow] cafe and, in those days,when the post office was in the build-ing and you bought the building, itautomatically came with the postoffice. So he bought it from Dwight

Rench. Dwight owned the property soDwight gave him the post office. Itdidn’t pay nothing to anybody but ifyou had it in with another business, itwas a help. He ran the Devil’s ElbowCafe, the post office, and had a fewgroceries. In those days when he hadthe cafe, you could sell anything. Therewere so many workers around hereand they didn’t have any place to eat.You’d sell anything you could get holdof to cook but you couldn’t get hold ofa lot of stuff.Dorothy: Those workers would go towork early in the morning and they’dcome down to our place and get sand-wiches to take.Jiggs: Any kind of business you werein, you could sell whatever you had,that’s how crowded it was, or if youhad anything you could rent to sleepin. They had trailers around here andthey rented beds by the eight hourshifts.OSG: When was the McCoy Hotelbuilt?Jiggs: 1942.OSG: So the big building next door tothe market now had rooms upstairsand a dance hall downstairs.Jiggs: Yes, when it was first built buthe didn’t last long as a dance hall man.He [Charles McCoy, Dorothy’s father]was a big man, six foot four and two-hundred and eighty-five pounds. Butany time you have booze and dancing,

you have trouble. He had guys build-ing it who were here looking for jobs atFort Leonard Wood. While they werewaiting, he would put them to workon that. OSG: How long was it in use.Jiggs: It’s been vacant about ten years.There were several apartments upstairsand two downstairs. Dorothy’s dadsold it to Childs. That’s when he quitboth the store and the post office. Heretired. That’s when I got the postoffice. Two guys put in for it but I gotit.OSG: And when was the store [market]built?Jiggs: 1954.OSG: How long did you run the mar-ket?Jiggs: Thirty years.OSG: What did you sell?Jiggs: Everything.Dorothy: Meat. We had real goodmeat. We even had people comingdown from Waynesville to buy meatand things.OSG: Did you rent boats?Jiggs: Used to a long time ago, backwhen the fort was closed in 45-46. Werented cabins down here to peoplewho came down from St. Louis onvacations. They stayed usually a weekat a time, rent a boat, and fish. Thosewere wooden boats, too, and we had tohave pretty good manpower to pickthose boats up. Some of them were

twenty feet long. OSG: You were the postmaster, right?How long?Jiggs: Thirty years, until 1984. Andthey’re going to enlarge our post office.OSG: We are losing ours in Duke. Ourpostmaster is retiring and they’re clos-ing the Duke post office.Jiggs: Maybe they’re going to sendyour mail through Devil’s Elbow(chuckle.)OSG: That’s okay with me. I wouldn’tmind having a Devil’s Elbow post-mark.Jiggs: You know, they quit postmark-ing. You know, when you mail a letternow, say to Waynesville, it goes toSpringfield and comes back. OSG: You mean it doesn’t get post-marked Devil’s Elbow?Jiggs: No. Not unless you ask for it.Everyone always liked the postmarkDevil’s Elbow. We used to tie the mailup with a string. We had a joke at thepost office. This person moved toDevil’s Elbow and came to mail a letteronce and they wanted to know whenthis letter would go out. I said “as soonas I get a bag full.” [Laughter] That wasa girl from Chicago. She said. “Well, Idon’t know how you guys do things.” OSG: You had to do it all?Jiggs: Yeah, we sorted it and fixed it allup for the route.

[Interview continued on Page 59.]

Almost a Lifetime in Devil’Almost a Lifetime in Devil’s Elbows ElbowShopkeepers and PostmasterAn interview with Dorothy and Jiggs Miller

Old Settlers Gazette 2007 - Page 56

The Devil’s landscape - The original Route 66 (1926) went through Hooker,around the large ridge, and through the community of Devil’s Elbow. In 1945, anew four-lane road was cut through the ridge which by-passed Hooker andDevil’s Elbow with its narrow bridge over the Big Piney River. Interstate 44 wascompleted in 1976, eliminating the Hooker Cut section, the first used and lastclosed four-lane section of Rt. 66 in Missouri. The map clearly shows the bend inthe river that begets the name. Tie rafters negotiating the curve said, “That’s adevil of an elbow.”

The Charles McCoy family in 1941. Pic-tured are C. O., wife Maggie, Dorothy,Paul, and youngest daughter Norma.The McCoys moved to Devil’s Elbowfrom Edina, MO to find more businessopportunities on Route 66 and nearFort Leonard Wood, which was underconstruction. Courtesy of Dorothy andJiggs Miller.

Old Settlers Gazette 2007 - Page 57

A seldom seen photograph of Devil’s Elbow in the bustling days of 1941. The large building under construction, center right, is McCoy's Store and Post Office (thethird post office), which contained a short-lived dance hall on the first floor. To the left of McCoy’s is Hiawatha Lodge, still standing but now a fine home. To the leftof Hiawatha Lodge is the Devil’s Elbow Cafe, the second post office in the community. At far left in the background is Cedar Lodge. Notice the trailers and cabinsthat housed workers at Fort Leonard Wood. Photograph courtesy of State Historic Preservation Office.

Pictured immediately above and to the right are the first two post offices inDevil’s Elbow. The cabins were two of several at the resort. Walter E. Grahamwas the first postmaster, 1927-1933. Dwight Rench, who built the infernalDevil’s Elbow Cafe, served from 1933-1935. Harold McKibben was postmasterfrom 1935-1937, then Rench resumed duties until 1941 when Charles McCoybought the cafe and became postmaster.

The community is not mentioned in Goodspeed’s 1889 history of PulaskiCounty. The bend in the river is labeled “Devil’s Elbow” on the 1906 Lumpkinand Matthews map, with but one dwelling shown, labeled “B. C. Robert.”Apparently, enough growth occurred in the next two decades to warrant apost office. The growth, no doubt, was aided by the automobile traffic onState Highway 14, which became Route 66 in 1926. Photographs courtesy ofJohn Bradbury.

Old Settlers Gazette 2007 - Page 58

Left: Teenager Dorothy McCoy posesto promote her family’s business.

Right: Winter, 1944, and a view of thecabins kept rented by the soldiers atnearby Fort Leonard Wood.

Below left: Postcard of McCoy's in1942, the full service stop for resi-dents and travelers on Route 66.

Below right: The hill and S-curvecoming out of the Devil’s Elbow val-ley, going west. This was originalRoute 66. The early post-and-cableguard rail was replaced by the WPAstone wall in the thirties.

Photos courtesy of Dorothy and Jiggs Miller.

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OSG: And some people would comeand pick up their mail.Jiggs: Yes, and they have more postoffice boxes now.OSG: What about some of the resortsthat people came to on Route 66? Whatabout Graham’s Resort?Jiggs: That was Walter Graham’s butTill Andres built it. That was WalterGraham’s brother-in-law from Jerome.Till Andres built it and Walter Grahamran it and had the first post office rightthere in front of it in the late twenties.Walter ran it for him (Till Andres) untilhe sold the property. It has changedhands several times and my son ownsit now.[Walter E. Graham was the first postmas-ter of Devil’s Elbow and served from 1927until 1933. Graham’s brother-in-law, TillAndres, was the brother of Perry Andres.The Andres brothers were very successfuloutfitters catering to the sporting elite inSt. Louis. Graham’s Camp later becameBig Piney Lodge.]

OSG: What was it like during the hey-day of Route 66, during the tourist sea-sons down here? Was it really busy?Jiggs: No, I didn’t notice it being sobusy. Of course, they changed theroute in 1945-46. They built the four-lane during World War II and it wasthe first four-lane highway they hadthrough here, from J highway to uphere [Grandview]. I was in the Armywhen they made Hooker Cut. Thatwas the first big cut they made. I wasreading about it this morning whenlooking for some post office papers.Found some postage from that time. A

stamp was three cents. I ran the postoffice for two years with three cents[stamps.] I retired as the postmaster in1984. When I started at the post office,I got $2200 a year, that’s what it paid.But it was in with the store see so, allthe time I was there, I got sixteen dol-lars a month rent.

OSG: [Looking at postal document.]Charles McCoy is listed as the outgo-ing postmaster. Pronounce your firstname for me.Jiggs: Oth-ole. A-t-h-o-l-l.OSG How did you get your nicknameJiggs.Jiggs: Well, my dad had a barber shopin Dixon and he used to send me to thepost office to get the mail which wasup the street two doors. The boys inthe post office started to call me Jiggsfor some reason, probably because theway my hair was laying. And with thename Atholl, everybody was ready tosay Jiggs.OSG: What was it like raising a familyin Devil’s Elbow?Jiggs: Oh, it was nice, you know. Youdidn’t have to worry about them.Everybody knew everybody and if akid was wrong, it would probably getback to his folks. Couldn’t get by withtoo much.OSG: Did a lot of people come in thesummer and stay in the cabins?Jiggs: Yeah, we had that when the fortwas closed. Otherwise, the cabins wereall rented to GIs when the fort wasopen. We had about 40 cabins downthere in Devil’s Elbow within walkingdistance of the store.

OSG: So [Devil’s Elbow] wasn’t sea-sonal?Jiggs: No, just during those short yearswas it seasonal. Mr. Ichord had hisplace [the old McCoy Hotel], DwightRench had his place [Hiawatha Lodgeand cabins], Big Piney River Lodgehad about 14 cabins, I think. This closeto post, you could rent them real quick. OSG: What impact did the by-passhave?Jiggs: That didn’t have much that Iknew of, although I wasn’t here whenit went in. Wasn’t too much ‘cause it’sjust a short hop from the road. But old66 was so crooked through here. Didyou ever read about the trucks goingup the hills so slow that people wouldjump up on the trucks and steal stuffoff of them. Hills were so steep a truckdriver wouldn’t dare stop ‘cause hewouldn’t get started again. See, all theplaces of business on old 66 closed up,most of them. This place here was acafe [pointing to where the Devil’sElbow Cafe was], Gibson's had agarage up here, McClary had a sou-venir stand up here. They all movedout to Buckhorn or some place like thatto stay on the highway.OSG: You’ve seen a lot of changes.Jiggs: Not too many people have seenthe changes we have seen.OSG: What are the biggest changesyou have seen?Jiggs: Oh, highways, I think. I believethat’s the biggest change and air-planes. They’ve got planes flying andyou don’t know what keeps them inthe sky.OSG: What are your fondest memories

of living here in Devil’s Elbow?Jiggs: I have a lot of fine memories. Ijust enjoyed working here and runningthe store. One thing I had was a goodbunch of people to trade with you.They were good steady customers, youknow. OSG: In the thirties, the State PlanningCommission named Devil’s Elbow asone of the eight most scenic places inMissouri.Jiggs: Yeah, but we didn’t know that.We just took it for granted.OSG: What changes have you seen inDevil’s Elbow over the years?Jiggs: Not a whole lot. It’s growing alittle bit, a few people moving in butnot a whole lot of changes. And that’sgood. Dorothy: There’s not anything for any-body to come here for anymore.Jiggs: Well, there’s probably as muchas there ever was. It’s quiet and youjust don’t have much traffic, althoughwe are getting a little more traffic withpeople moving in. We’ve had somegood neighbors but we’ve seen a lot ofthem go. You know, when you get intothe eighties, there are not too manyleft.

[The interview ended with Jiggs making abrief reference to his service in World WarII. He trained in artillery at Ft. Sill, wentto England, and then participated in theinvasion of France and saw “quite a bit ofcombat.” After the Battle of the Bulge andBelgium, he marched on into Germany andcollected five battle stars. Jiggs andDorothy are still living in Devil’s Elbow,across from the store.]

Old Settlers Gazette 2007 - Page 59

Top left: In the days before shrink wrapped meat, steaks and chops were cut toorder in the thickness you wanted, as Jiggs is doing here.Bottom left: Miller’s Market in 1962. The market, built in 1954 when it becamethe fourth post office, still serves the Devil’s Elbow community as store and postoffice, although now as Shelden's Market.Top right: Aerial photo of downtown Devil’s Elbow in the seventies. The longstructure at center left is the McCoy market, which became an apartment build-ing and is now vacant. Below McCoy’s is Miller’s Market. Across the street is theDorothy and Jiggs Miller home. Hiawatha Lodge, now a home, is at bottom cen-ter. This view of Devil’s Elbow is pretty much the same today. Photos courtesy ofDorothy and Jiggs Miller.