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The Truman Area Community Network
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This map was scanned from a two copies made from the 1895 Plat Book of Henry County, using a hand scanner, and stitched together. (Which accounts for the blank areas in opposite corners and the somewhat wavy nature of some of the lines.) Linda Everhart's USGenWeb site for Henry County has a much neater version, in 2 parts, scanned in color: Fairview township part (Deepwater), Osage township part (Brownington), and detailed maps of Deepwater and Brownington.
The town of Deepwater is located in Fairview Township in henry County, while Brownington is located in Osage Township. The dividing line can be clearly seen, running north and south through the middle of the map. (The plat book shows each township on a separate page, which is why there were two copies and two scans.)
Coal and clay were the big natural attractions of the area around Deepwater and Brownington. Both were readily available and easily mined, the coal mostly by underground mines at first while the clay was taken from the surface or from the upper levels of the coal mines.
Brownington is the older of the two towns. The portion in section 19 was first platted as Consville in 1867, then Brownington proper was laid out around the Memphis road survey in 1869. The railroad line was graded in 1872-1873 but no track was laid then. The line was finally completed through Brownington in 1884 by the Kansas City & Southern RR, which became the Kansas City Osceola & Southern, familiarly known as the Blair Line.
Keith & Perry bought coal land west of Brownington and then convinced George Nettleton of the Kansas City Fort Scott & Gulf to build a line from near Kansas City through Clinton and Osceola to near Springfield, which became the Kansas City Clinton & Springfield RR, the famed "Leaky Roof". This line was completed in 1885, and the town of Deepwater platted by George Nettleton as part rival and part neighbor to Brownington.
Both the Blair Line and the Leaky Roof built several spur lines in the area to reach the various coal mines.
The Leaky Roof had three principal spurs. The northernmost ran from a point ½ mile north of the north limits of Deepwater and ran about a mile southeast and then northeast past the Keith & Perry #1 and #2 coal mines, in section 12. (Keith & Perry had become the Central Coal & Coke Company, C.C.& C., by 1895, when this plat was done. The second spur left the main just south of the south town limits and curved through the site of the W. S. Dickey Clay Company plant #1 for about half a mile. (Some other maps show this spur curving back to the northeast to end in the W. C. Loyd tract.) The third spur left the main line about a mile south of town and went about one third of a mile straight north into the Dickey #2 plant.
The Blair Line had one major spur. This left the main line about half a mile north of Brownington (at a point designated Blanchard in the 1912 Mileage List. It ran west then northwest across Cooper Creek and then divided into 4 sub-spurs. One very short spur served the plant of the Kansas City Vitrified Brick Company, just east of the township line near the dividing point of the line. (This plant was locally known as "The Chuffee" from the sound made by its steam engine.) The longest sub-spur went southwest to the Blair Diamond coal mines, another went a short ways west to a coal mine on land shown as owned in 1895 by H. P. Faris, a prominent Clintonian, and the third went north to a mine on land owned by Terrill. There was a second short spur on the G. C. Martin 40 acres just south of Brownington. Although the plat book shows no mine there it was probably intended as a coal loading point.
By the early 1920'ss most of the easily accessible underground coal had been mined out and the area was turning to strip mining. Coal, and clay for the Dickey plant, were stripped from the Jacob Rhodes farm, just north of Deepwater Creek on the west side of the KCC&S line, about a mile or so past the north end of the map. Reliance Coal did considerable stripping southwest of Deepwater, loading out at a tipple on the Charles Boydston property about 1 ½ miles south of Deepwater. Later Dickey would get clay from two stripping area in St. Clair County, the first immediately south of the county line on the west side of the KCC&S tracks, and the second about half a mile further south along the railway line. Tebo Coal Company did considerable stripping of coal from an area just across the county line in St. Clair County, along the former Blair Line tracks.
In 1924 the Frisco, which had acquired the Blair line in 1899, gained full control of the Leaky Roof. To consolidate facilities and eliminating unnecessary duplication of service, a connecting track was built from the Blair Line north of Brownington to the Leaky Roof line south of Deepwater. The line utilized part of the Blair Line's coal spur, but did not turn so sharply northwest. It came into Deepwater close to the half section line. The Brownington station was moved from its original location in town to a point on the new line in January of 1926 and after January 31, 1926 all trains used the Blair Line tracks out of Clinton to Brownington, then took the cutoff to Deepwater Junction, and used the Leaky Roof tracks south.
The Leaky Roof trackage from Deepwater north to Clinton was removed around 1929 after clay stripping in the area had ceased. The Blair line tracks from Brownington to Lowry City Junction were removed around 1934 after Tebo Coal had closed its stripping operation near the county line. By this time all the other spur lines except the one into the Dickey plants had apparently been taken up. The Dickey plant shut down permanently in 1946 and this last spur line came up soon after.
Not shown at all on this map is Dickey's internal narrow gauge railway, known locally as "The Dinky". It was primarily used to bring clay from the local pits to the main plant; some photographs show the line climbing a trestle that went into the upper floor of the plant so the clay could be delivered direct. Dickey did considerable clay stripping at various points east of the plant and the dinky may have gone quite a ways east of town. Aerial photographs of the county taken in 1952 also seem to show traces of a line going south from plant #1 to plant #2 and southeast to a coal mine north of plant #2 that could have been part of the internal system.
