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Spring River Article
The Spring River is a 129 mi waterway located in southwestern Missouri, southeastern Kansas, and northeastern Oklahoma. It begins in northern Barry County, Missouri south of Aurora, flows north of Verona and turns west across Lawrence and Jasper counties, passing through Carthage, before crossing into Cherokee County, Kansas, where it widens considerably. It flows past the east sides of Riverton and Baxter Springs before emptying into the Grand Lake o' the Cherokees in Ottawa County, Oklahoma.

History
The Spring River takes its name from the many seeps and springs that provide its baseflow. Big Spring in Lawrence County is the largest spring in the Spring River basin, discharging 12.3 million gallons of water per day. The spring flows from the base of a high bluff of Burlington Keokuk limestone known as Baptist Hill, and enters the Spring River about 200 feet away. The river forms the western boundary of the Ozarks in southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas. All of the Ozark area in southeast Kansas is contained within the Spring River basin.



The river was important to Native American tribes and later European-American settlers in Lawrence and Jasper County, especially around Carthage, where it was not yet too wide to dam. Scores of grist and sawmills were established on the river in those counties beginning as early as the 1840s. A dam erected northeast of Carthage in 1875 provided water power to mills and other industry through a mile-long millrace, which fed into an industrial basin on north Main street. The concentration of industry there continues to affect the water quality in the river.

Spring River was one of the "Seven Bulls," a term used by Native American tribes to describe the rivers of southwest Missouri.

Ecology
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks currently has a health advisory against the consumption of fish, shellfish and aquatic wildlife of Spring River from the confluence of Center Creek to the Kansas/Oklahoma border in Cherokee County, Kansas due to lead and cadmium contamination. Effluents from sewage treatment facilities enter streams at several locations. Numerous industries, mines, subdivisions, and mobile home parks, all have permits to discharge treated wastes into Spring River watershed. Potential sources of non-point source pollution in the basin include: runoff from mine tailings and active mining sites, dairy operations, poultry husbandry, sedimentation from erosion in disturbed watersheds, sludge application from sewage treatment facilities, seepage from septic tanks, and runoff from urban areas. A health advisory, recommending against the consumption of fish from the Spring River from Verona Missouri to Hoberg Missouri because of dioxin contamination from runoff at a manufacturing plant, was issued during the late 1980's, but was lifted in 1993.

Eighty-six fish species and thirty-five mussel species have been collected in the Spring River basin. Common sportfish include smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, spotted bass, white crappie, rock bass and channel catfish. There are several state or federally listed threatened and endangered species, including the Ozark cavefish, Neosho madtom, redfin darter, Arkansas darter, western fanshell, Neosho mucket, bluntface shiner, and western slim minnow.

Harold Ensley Article
Harold Edward Ensley (November 20, 1912 - August 24, 2005) was an American radio and television personality best known for his television program The Sportsman's Friend. His innovative, nationally syndicated program was one of the first to feature fishing and hunting, and ran nonstop for 48 years. Harold Ensley earned the title: "World Champion of Freshwater Sport Fishing" by winning Sports Illustrated's first major fishing tournament, "The World Series of Freshwater Sport Fishing" in 1960. He has been inducted into the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, the Kansas Association of Broadcaster's Hall Of Fame, Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. He has won numerous awards for hunting, fishing, and broadcasting. Mr. Ensley, a noted lure designer, contributed to the development of modern sport fishing lures. He also marketed his own line of fishing rods, reels and various fishing accessories, and wrote two books, Winds of Chance and Wings of Chance, which recount some of his life's adventures outdoors.

Early life and radio show
Harold Ensley grew up on a cattle ranch near the town of Healy, Kansas. He was an avid history student, and at the age of eighteen graduated valedictorian of his one-room schoolhouse --despite his habit of skipping class to go fishing. After completing school, he moved to Joplin, Missouri, where he was a Church of Christ minister, and had his own Christian radio show. Once while attempting to sell advertisement slots during his radio program, a friend commented that he would buy an ad if Harold had a fishing show. Mr. Ensley started that show by donating his time for free. He chose the Smiley Burnette song, "It's My Lazy Day," which contains the line, "Well, I might have gone fishin'..." for the show's theme song. Many years later, Smiley sang the song ‘live' on Harold's TV show. Mr. Ensley moved to Kansas City in 1949. There he wrote a syndicated newspaper column, while working for another radio station selling advertising. He convinced the radio station to air The Fisherman's Friend,  in 1951 by working for free. The radio show began with a new theme song, "Gone Fishin'" written by Nick and Charles Kenny. This became Ensley's theme song throughout his career.

The Sportsman's Friend
In 1953, Ensley decided to try something relatively new: a prime-time television show on fishing. The weekly half-hour program, called The Sportsman's Friend, aired on KCMO-TV in Kansas City, and included segments on fishing, hunting and other outdoor adventures. With sponsorship from the Ford Motor Co., the show was an immediate success.

"When we first tried this live show, I wondered if anyone would even tune in," Mr. Ensley said. "But after that first show, the switchboard at the station was filled up. There must be more fishermen out there than I thought."

Initially in black and white, Ensley said it was the second televised outdoors show at that time. Later it would be among the first of television shows in the Midwest to air in color. When Mr. Ensley started his show, fishing was prime-time material. He did live shows weekly for 21 years, opposite such popular series as Peter Gunn and Ben Casey. Yet, The Sportsman's Friend jumped to the top of the ratings and fared very well throughout the years. He chose to continue using his radio show theme song, "Gone Fishin'," for his television program. At the end of each show, Harold Ensley would give his closing thoughts leading into "his fishing fever getting up", and then transitioning into his slightly varying tagline: "....and you know when Ensley's fishin' fever is high, if anybody asks where Ensley is, you tell 'em that the last you saw him, he had gone fishin'." He would then hang his "Gone Fishin'" sign over the mantle of his "hunting lodge set" fireplace and exit as his theme song started to play. His tagline/song combination was so effective that The Sportsman's Friend also became known as "Gone Fishin' " by many viewers.

"I think that fact that we did it live really made the show what it was," Mr. Ensley said in 1997. "We'd show film of me fishing someplace, then we'd have live guests. People from everywhere would call us to see if they could be on to show the fish they had caught. One time a guy from Hiawatha, Kansas came in with a 72-pound flathead catfish. We had it in a horse tank in the back of a pickup, and he drove it right onto the set. When he pulled that big catfish out of the tank, water went flying everywhere."

Every week for twenty-one years, 1,104 live telecasts, with no reruns, Harold and his son Dusty filmed their adventures. They shot over two million feet of film. Episodes covered topics from snow and water skiing, waterfowl and upland game bird hunting, hang gliding to horseback riding in the high country. And of course, the predominate element of the program remained fishing. Extras on his show included his two dogs, Ben, an English Setter, and a pointer named after his red (Country Squire, Ford station wagon), Country Squire.

As the show grew more popular Mr. Ensley branched out and began spanning the globe. He traveled internationally to televise shows on four continents and from four oceans. By 1973 his show went into national syndication and was shown in seventy markets across the nation for the next twenty-seven years. All together, The Sportsman's Friend was on air forty-eight straight years. It became the longest running show of its kind.

Fishing lure design and Harold Ensley merchandise
Mr. Ensley is also known for designing fishing lures. In the 1950s he invented the "Reaper" lure, which played a seminal role in the growth of soft-plastic fishing baits. It was manufactured by Ted Green of Mar Lynn Lure Company in Blue Springs, Missouri. Ensley designed it for catching lake trout in Canada, but as Green made them in various sizes, it became a popular multispecies lure. The Reaper was a precursor to modern soft-plastic baits commonly used world-wide today.

Throughout his career he also endorsed and marketed his own line of fishing rods, reels and various fishing merchandise manufactured though different companies. These items included fillet knives, lures, tackle, and even fish fry coating mix, which bear his signature and often his image.

Television appearances and celebrity status
As Harold Ensley's success grew he became a national celebrity. He was asked to make guest appearances on prime-time TV series. He guided Jed Clampett on a fishing trip during an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. The cast of Gunsmoke appeared on his show, and he appeared on Gunsmoke as one of Festus' drunken cousins who was thrown in jail. He taught Jimmy Stewart how to cast at a motel swimming pool. Harold Ensley taught Henry Fonda how to catch trout in Wyoming during the 1963 premier of Spencer's Mountain. He fished with Tennessee Ernie Ford, Karl Malden, Rex Allen, William Holden, Denver Pyle, Mel Tillis, Kirk Douglas, Clint Walker, Clint Eastwood, Barbara Rhoades, Robert Fuller and many other notables. He hunted quail with Roy Rogers and the Apollo 17 astronauts and fished with various governors, senators, and a president's son. He loved major league baseball, and fished with Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Enos Slaughter, Stan Musial, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Roger Maris, and George Brett. Mickey Mantle autographed a photo to him which read, "To Harold, the second best fisherman I know. (signed) Number One; Mickey Mantle."

Final years and death
Harold's wife, Bonnie R. Ensley passed away Jan. 12, 1992 at the age of 70. Harold Ensley himself had suffered many years with heart problems but he refused to let it slow him down. At age 80, when he had a heart attack, he didn't even consider retiring. Just a month after being hospitalized, he was back fishing in front of the cameras. "I had a tarpon-fishing trip to Costa Rica planned, and I didn't want to miss it," Mr. Ensley told The Kansas City Star in 1997. At 88, Ensley was forced to quit the show after a boating accident in Costa Rica, when he severely injured his spine. After the show ended, he wrote two books on his life experiences and was a popular speaker at banquets and sports shows. Ensley also loved gardening at home and continued fishing when his health allowed. He never stopped promoting sport fishing. In the last year of his life, he was teaching his care-giver to catch and clean crappie. She escorted Ensley, who was in a wheelchair, on a fishing trip days before the start of his last hospital stay.

Reflecting on his earlier lifetime in a 2003 interview with the The Wichita Eagle, Ensley said: "Back then, fishing and hunting were largely seen as a waste of time when you could be working," "Who'd have ever thought I'd find a way to get paid for hunting and fishing for all those years?"

During their last conversation, Ensley told his son he'd been dreaming about fishing. "He said he'd been dreaming about bass fishing at Table Rock Lake using a buzzbait," Dusty Ensley said. "He went out thinking about hunting and fishing." Harold Ensley passed away at his home in Overland Park, Kansas at the age of 92.

Additional reading
Winds of Chance by Harold Ensley Leathers Pub, 2002 ISBN 1585971316, 9781585971312 Harold Ensley's autobiography and first book.

Wings of Chance by Harold Ensley Leathers Pub, 2003 ISBN 1585972339, 9781585972333 Harold Ensley's second book, about his hunting adventures with famous people.