Craig-O-Leigh

Son Steve writes...

Craig-O-Leigh or Pig-O as it is affectionately referred to amongst any of us lucky enough to fall victim to it’s charms, was a small run down resort in Pineville, MO.

My first trip to Pig-O was when I was in 7th grade. My parents and their friends Veet and Rudy Cleveland decided to go on a canoe trip in southern Missouri. Clevelands brought their youngest son Shawn who was 3 or 4 years older than me.

After a rather uneventful 5 hour drive from Eudora to Pineville we arrived to find that no one in Pineville had ever heard of Craig-O-Leigh, not a good sign seeing as how this was supposed to be a “resort”. Finally after asking all 13 people in town one grizzled old pioneer had heard a legend about a Hollywood film director who had moved to the Pineville area in the 1930’s to open a resort. “That must be it” dad said, “how do we get there?”

And thus the real adventure began, at the end of a barely maintained mostly dirt road that lead east out of town we found a collection of rundown “cabins” that looked like something out of a “Beverly Hillbillies” introduction. Each had a wooden shingle nailed to the side with a name on it. On this particular adventure we stayed at “Clyde”, later as more of the family members joined the Pig-O experience we moved to “Ivanhoe” the two story cabin, but that is a tale for another time, for now we will concentrate on “Clyde”.

Clyde was a small 2 room (well 3 if you count the closet that was turned into a bathroom/shower at some point in time) shack, shack is being kind. The floorboards were full of holes, cracks and protruding nails. A screened in porch served as the bedroom with two full size “beds”. Needless to say a high school student did not want to share a bedroom with his parents so Shawn decided to sleep outside on the picnic table (but more on that later).

Mom and Veet were less than impressed with Craig-O-Leigh even when they found out that the “Jesse James Cave” was near by. Turns out that the place really had been started by an ex-Hollywood movie director and his crowning achievement was a film about Jesse James, a local hero to the area whom gained some notoriety as an outlaw in the late 1800’s. The aforementioned cave was used in the movie as a hideout for Mr. James and his “gang”.










Upon walking a narrow path around a rock bluff hill there was indeed a cave. From the east side of the cave extended an unkempt and deteriorating stairway that led down to the road below. Legend had it that the cave was shown to tourists until the 1940’s for some nominal cost and the stairway remained from that time.

As exciting as the cave turned out to be it was not the reason we had drive to southern Missouri over Labor Day weekend. We came to canoe, something none of us had ever done before.
Canoeing doesn’t really sound that hard, you put all your stuff in a canoe jump in and float down the river. At some designated point along the river the “resort” staff picks you and the canoe up and you ride back to the “resort” on an old dilapidated school bus. That’s all there is to it, not too complicated, we thought.

By the end of August the rivers in southern Missouri are pretty dry. So instead of floating we had to do a lot of dragging (read portaging) the canoe. When we were in the water overhanging branches and sunken stumps were constant obstacles to be feared. On several occasions one or more of our group of 3 canoes was upside down and had to be dragged to the side of the river to be righted. Remember how I said you put all your stuff in the canoe? Well the first time you tip over you can guess what happens to your stuff, including your sun tan lotion. Which brings me to my fondest memory of the trip.

You know how when you are on the water the sun’s power is intensified from the sun reflecting off the water? Well I know that too, now. Unfortunately I didn’t know it then. After a whole day of playing in the water, floating, dragging, turning the canoe back over and chasing flotsam down the river, my Norwegian/Belgian skin was fried to a crisp, especially my legs. To this day I do not wear shorts outside during the summer. I was so burned that I could hardly stand it. Someone, I believe it was my mom, but it could have been Veet recommended that I put lotion on my burned legs to keep them from peeling. Peeling? Hell I thought they were going to burst into flames, but I did what I was told. Now you probably know that the best thing for a burn is to leave it out to breath and perhaps use a small amount of aloe on it. Well I know that too now. Needless to say the lotion did not keep my legs from peeling but it did keep them from breathing and thus made them hurt even more.


So when night came, after at least a 90 degree day, the cool weather was too much to resist so I joined Shawn outside to try to sleep. As I stated earlier Shawn has scoped out the picnic table when we had first arrived so I found a couple of lawn chairs to sprawl out in. At this point I think it is important that I describe the terrain surrounding Pig-O. The “resort” lies in a cleft of a rocky crag of hills. The entire place is covered with broken and jagged rocks about the size of a softball, any one of which could easily have been used by cavemen as an axe. The ground is very uneven and falls are a constant source of terror. Clyde was at the headwaters of a dry creek bed that flowed through the camp. In the wet season the creek would swell to a raging torrent capable of tearing the flesh off of any living thing caught in it’s path, but that didn’t happen on this trip. Anyway, Clyde was on one face of the canyon left by the dry creek and you parked above the cabin to the west.

The picnic table was south of the cabin perched on the edge of the canyon. It was in the bottom of this canyon (about 20 feet down) that we found Shawn the next morning. It was never clear if Shawn rolled off the table or if he got up to heed natures call in the middle of the night but either way the first light of day found him scraped and bruised 10 yard from where he had gone to sleep the night before. That was the first of many Cleveland injuries at Craig-O-Leigh.

That was how it all started. My dad had such a great time that he decided that Pig-O would be our families Labor Day destination for several years to come, and each year Clevelands joined us. Each year the event grew and one of the Clevelands got hurt.






My last trip to Craig-O-Leigh was Labor Day Weekend 1995 with my stepson Travis Seirer.
Craig-O-Leigh holds many fond memories. I am sure that others have memories of their own to add.

Note: Teri contributed these Pig-O photos from the years when the Hamlin and Cleveland families made the trek to Pineville for Labor Day.