History

Before 1961, the Pomme de Terre River was a free-flowing stream that served as a line between settlers and American Indians, and now it has a 7,800-acre lake.

Pomme de terre means apple of the earth, the French term for potato. The river rises near Marshfield, the town the 1880 cyclone nearly erased, and flows northward through Webster, Dallas, Polk and Hickory counties. Missouri State Parks says that when settlement began in Polk and Hickory counties in the 1830s, the river was the dividing line between American Indians and settlers until 1835.

The Corps of Engineers built the dam. Planning began in 1947, construction began in 1957, and the dam was completed in 1961 at a cost of $14,946,784.

The dam sits two to three miles south of Hermitage, at the confluence of Lindley Creek and the Pomme de Terre. Water began to be stored on October 29, 1961, and the multipurpose pool was reached on June 15, 1963. The dam consists of a 14-foot (4 m) circular tunnel with two 6.5 X 14-foot (4 m) hydraulic slide service gates and a single 24-inch (610 mm) circular low flow gate. The dam is 7,230 feet (2,204 m) long, 30 feet (9 m) wide at the top and 950 feet (290 m) wide at the base (maximum).  The project is part of the Osage River Basin and was designed for flood control. It is the only dam on the river before it enters the Osage as an arm of Truman Lake.

It's a big lake. The multipurpose pool covers about 7,820 acres, with 113 miles of shoreline and a flood pool of about 16,100 acres. The lake reaches a maximum depth of about 95 feet, with an average of 69. Locals call it Pommey.

Two units of Pomme de Terre State Park, on the Hermitage and Pittsburg sides, together total almost 700 acres, or 735 in one account.

The county names have a story. Settlers named the county Hickory, after Andrew Jackson's nickname, and its seat Hermitage, after his Tennessee homestead, according to Missouri Life and Wikipedia. Hickory County was organized on February 14, 1845.

The lake changed the river. The reservoir eliminated the central portion of the river for floating, although some floatable water remains above and below it.

Below the dam, Outlet Park offers fishing and canoeing on the river. Years later, in 1979, the closing of Truman Dam flooded the downstream end of the river, so that the Pomme de Terre now ends in an arm of that larger lake.

The watershed covers about 840 square miles in parts of six counties.