Futility Closet - 303-Camp Stark

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from Dracula's behavior to an obstinate shape. This is episode 303. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1943, the U.S. established a camp for German prisoners of war near the village of Stark in northern New Hampshire. After a rocky start, the relations between the prisoners and guards underwent a surprising change. In today's show, we'll tell the story of Camp Stark and the transforming power of human decency.

Starting point is 00:00:46 We'll also check out some Canadian snakes and puzzle over some curious signs. When it entered World War II, the United States did not expect to deal with many prisoners of war on its own soil. But as Britain began taking more and more prisoners of its own, it pressed the Americans to help, and eventually they accepted almost 400,000 German prisoners of war, placing them in more than 500 camps across the country. The prisoners' basic standard of living was usually higher here than it had been in Germany, which led some Americans to grumble about coddling.

Starting point is 00:01:24 But in fact, the prisoners were useful. Like the other belligerents in the war, the United States needed more manpower than it had, and the prisoners could be put to work in industries that had been depleted by the war effort. One of these was the pulpwood industry, whose products were needed for the war and whose loggers had been drawn away to better-paying jobs elsewhere. Particularly hard hit was the Brown Company of Berlin, New Hampshire, which had lost half its woodcutters and was producing only 40% of its quota. So in July 1943, a German POW camp was established to provide labor for the company. It was set up near the town of Stark, 30 miles from the Canadian border. During the New Deal,

Starting point is 00:02:02 the Civilian Conservation Corps had built a work camp there, with five wooden barracks, a recreation hall, and a mess hall. The government now installed a fence around this, with a guard tower in each corner, and New Hampshire's only prisoner of war camp was ready to go. The first train arrived in April 1944, bearing 100 prisoners dressed in GI Army clothing and singing a German song. They filed into the little camp and were assigned barracks and bunks. What made Camp Stark unusual was that most of its inmates opposed the Nazi cause. Most of them had been members of the so-called 999th Division,

Starting point is 00:02:42 which was made up largely of political prisoners who had protested against the Nazi regime. In the later stages of the war, as Germany had grown desperate for military manpower, these men had been conscripted from their prisons, but they had no intention of dying for Hitler. Sent to North Africa, they had surrendered quickly to the invading forces whose political ideology they often sympathized with. This gave the New Hampshire prison camp a unique character. Generally, the Stark prisoners were older and better educated than regular German troops, wiser in the ways of the world, and more cosmopolitan. They spoke not only German, but also French, English, Dutch, Italian, and Norwegian. The Americans didn't understand this at first. They only rushed the prisoners into the woods to get the supply of pulpwood flowing, each man wearing a dark shirt and trousers with the letters P.W.

Starting point is 00:03:29 painted in white on the front and back. This led at first to confusion and misunderstanding. There were some ardent Nazis at Stark, and the anti-Nazis hoped to be given preferential treatment and welcomed as allies. But the Americans kept their distance, inhibited by orders that forbade them from conversing with prisoners. Throughout the spring and summer of 1944, relations worsened. The prisoners couldn't reach their quota of pulpwood, which they said was too high, and those who failed to keep up were thrown in the stockade. Black flies and mosquitoes plagued them in the woods, and they were even oppressed by children in passing buses who sang God Bless America at them. The camp began to earn a reputation as the least productive pulpwood camp in the Northeast. A long heat wave set in, and the prisoners endured fatigue, cramped quarters,

Starting point is 00:04:11 personal differences, and worries about their families back home. As tensions rose, some prisoners began running away. This had been one of the worries that led the Americans to resist accepting prisoners in the first place. But Stark's escapees turned out to pose little danger. None of them committed sabotage or crime. None tried to return to Germany. Few even traveled very far. Most of them just wanted to get away from captivity, to be free for a while. It was hard to escape from the camp itself, but it was easy to escape from the work sites in the woods. You just hide at the end of the day and wait to be left behind. It was so easy, in fact, that Camp Stark probably had the highest escape rate of any prisoner of war camp in the United States. At one time, 10% of the prisoners were on the loose. One month saw

Starting point is 00:04:54 19 prisoners escape. After some time alone, most of the escaped prisoners simply surrendered to civilians. As the escapes became almost routine, sometimes no search was even made. The army would just call the FBI, whose agents would drive to the camp and wait for someone to call in a report. The most famous escapee from Stark was Franz Bacher, a 27-year-old Austrian who'd been captured in Tunisia in 1943. He'd hated military life. He was an accomplished artist and used his art to make friends at Stark. He gave oil paintings to the guards, and during breaks in the woods, he'd make drawings and give them to the civilian foreman. Among other subjects, he painted the wives and girlfriends of the guards, who paid him,

Starting point is 00:05:34 against regulations, in American currency. When he had enough American currency, he made his escape. He acquired a civilian jacket, painted the letters PW on it in watercolor, and wore it to the work site. Then he disappeared into the woods and washed off the letters in a stream. When he turned up missing in the headcount at the end of the day, the guards investigated and found a note on his bunk. It said, I am going to escape today. The reason I am doing this is I live for my art. If I continue to cut wood, my hands will become so mutilated that I will be unable to paint. If I can't paint, I can do nothing. Bakker hiked more than 20 miles across the Kilkenny wilderness and came out on U.S. Route 2 in Jefferson, New Hampshire. There he caught a

Starting point is 00:06:16 bus south to New York City, where he set to work, supporting himself by selling pictures he painted in Central Park. He slept in the park for 30 nights and then rented a room on St. Mark's Place. He seemed to have realized his dream perfectly when he was stopped by a preposterous coincidence. One Sunday morning in early October 1944, he was making his way among the thousands of travelers in Penn Station when he bumped into Ted Taussig, the army interpreter from Camp Stark, who was in New York City on a three-day leave. Not only was it surprising to meet another Stark acquaintance 400 miles from the camp, but these two knew each other well. Taussig was from Vienna himself originally and had only barely escaped the Nazis. In fact, the two men discovered that their homes in the city had been only a few blocks apart. At Penn Station, they had a brief, friendly conversation and went their separate

Starting point is 00:07:03 ways. And now, Taussig faced a difficult choice between loyalty to the United States and loyalty to his friend. Finally, he decided that, as an American soldier and not knowing what Bacher planned to do, he had no choice but to call the authorities. Bacher was captured several days later at an art supply store in Union Square, and he spent the rest of the war in a POW camp at Fort Devons, Massachusetts. He later told a friend he thought Taussig had not turned him in. I don't know whether he ever learned the truth. Back at Stark, the strife, high escape rate, and low production told against the camp commander,

Starting point is 00:07:37 Edgar Schwartz, and he was replaced by 31-year-old Captain Alexandium Cobus from another Pulp Wood prisoner of war camp in Princeton, Maine. Cobus strove for fairness, focused on production, and kept himself in the background, and conditions quickly improved. Interestingly, he cut down on escapes by trusting the prisoners. He asked each prisoner to make a voluntary pledge never to try to escape, and he found that those who took the pledge never did. This allowed him to cut back on guards, and that gave the men a greater sense of freedom and responsibility. At the start of the Prisoner of War program, the War Department had planned a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 3 to 1. At Stark, it eventually rose to

Starting point is 00:08:15 20 to 1. Soon production began to reach the expected targets, and escapes nearly ceased, and on this new sounder footing, something remarkable began to happen. One day, an American guard, Donald Beatty, saw a German worker struggling alone with a two-man saw. It was late in the day, and his partner had been taken away to work on another task. Beatty considered, then put down his rifle and took up the saw's other end. This only made sense, he said later. It was cold, and one man oughtn't work a two-man saw. This only made sense, he said later. It was cold and one man oughtn't work a two-man saw.

Starting point is 00:08:47 This spirit began to spread. When a company truck broke down, a German mechanic fixed it. German prisoners bought cigarettes at a canteen inside the German compound and shared them with American foremen. One of the prisoners, Gerhard Klaus, said later, in any war, the enemy's always the bad man and your own troops are the good ones. It's just normal. But I think when they realized, the Americans, that we are no Huns, as was being told them, then I'd say something like a cooperation developed. The villagers and prisoners began to wave to one

Starting point is 00:09:13 another and say good morning. When an American guard dozed off under a tree, the Germans worked quietly so as not to wake him, and when a horse became injured in deep snow and had to be shot, a German worker wept while the American foreman consoled him. In time, Warren Hoyt, a guard, felt no trepidation turning his back on a German prisoner holding an axe. He said, him having an axe didn't faze me. Those boys weren't looking for any trouble. All they wanted to do was go home. These budding friendships were deepened back at the camp, Hoyt said later. Those prisoners were a talented bunch, I tell you. Each one of them had a special skill or trade he could do, first class.

Starting point is 00:09:50 They taught each other languages and mathematics, and Tauskik taught American history and democracy to interested prisoners. Some of the Germans shared sketches, drawings, and paintings with American guards and foremen and made gifts and trinkets for their children, an Easter basket, a hobby horse, a little sled. They bought musical instruments, a victrola, and some records and assembled an orchestra with violins, guitars, and a piano, inviting American officers to their concerts. On Sundays, Taussig piped records over the camp's PA system, which united both those who loved Beethoven and those who did not. The Germans made pets of animals they found in the woods, and those who did not. The Germans made pets of animals they found in the woods, squirrels,

Starting point is 00:10:31 snakes, chipmunks, a raccoon, even briefly a bear cub. One kept a rabbit and found it a mate. When the rabbit population reached 30, he let them all go, crying as he did. A crow with a broken wing was named Jakob. The prisoners painted PW on his back, and he hopped and flew between the Germans and Americans, looking for handouts. The camp was too small to have much of an athletics program, but the Americans would watch the Germans play football. One day, 1st Sergeant Frank Chappell proposed a game between the guards and the prisoners. This was meant to be in good fun, but the guards were determined to win. During the game, Chappell accidentally kicked one of the leading German players. He apologized automatically, and the German looked at him, surprised and quizzical. Then they both smiled and played on. Chappell said that at that moment it was as though a crust broke. The strange feeling that had prevailed between them disappeared,

Starting point is 00:11:14 and they could follow their natural instincts of competitive good sportsmanship. He added, the prisoners slaughtered us. The change extended into the village of Stark. In June 1944, one prisoner wrote in his diary, They were mostly women, few men, only a few children. We longed for civilian life. We all wished that once again we could walk on the street without a guard wherever we wanted to go. With experience, the Americans came to pervert the German medic Johann Yarkovsky to their own physicians, and he began to make unofficial rounds in the village, traveling in the camp doctor's truck. By April 1945, it was clear that the war was in its final stages.

Starting point is 00:12:04 When Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12th, a delegation of Stark prisoners presented a letter of condolence to the camp commander, some of them close to tears. By contrast, when Hitler died a few weeks later, they showed no emotion. Most saw it only as a step closer to the end of the war and their return home. As American prisoners of war began to return from Germany, some of them were assigned as guards at Stark. This brought some trepidation. If the Americans had been mistreated overseas, how would they treat German prisoners now that the tables were turned? The answer was a great surprise. Rather than bearing a grudge against the German prisoners, the Americans bore them no animosity,

Starting point is 00:12:40 and in fact some of the closest friendships in the camp arose between these two groups. The Americans brought reliable first-hand news of Germany, and as former prisoners themselves, they empathized with the Germans. The war had shown them enough of punishment and hatred, and mistreating German prisoners could do nothing to diminish their own suffering. Some of the returning Americans spoke German, and they had developed a European perspective on war, history, life, and politics. The two groups played football together, and when the Germans' rations were cut, the history, life, and politics. The two groups played football

Starting point is 00:13:05 together, and when the Germans' rations were cut, the guards slipped them food and cigarettes. One of the prisoners said, these people were of great help to us, and they were more comrades than guards. They were often a big comfort to us. By 1946, wartime was over, and the camp closed that spring. Some of the prisoners returned to Germany and others were dispatched to help rebuild Britain and France. The camp had existed for only two years, from April 1944 to July 1946. Today is just a clearing in the woods with the remains of some stone fireplaces and a roadside sign marking the site. But Dartmouth historian Alan Koop, who's written a book about the camp, calls it an island of decency in a world at war. He wrote, the Americans and Germans at Stark met as enemies, their nations at war with

Starting point is 00:13:50 each other, but some of them reached out to find similarities that bound them together. No miracles occurred. No one claimed a new breakthrough in human relations. Whatever good happened did not happen to everyone, nor did it happen overnight. But most of the people at Camp Stark, on both sides of the fence, today realize they were part of something big, something elusive, something special, possibly, for some, the most important thing they ever did. One of the prisoners, Hermann Osmer, told him, my imprisonment, my imprisonment in America, was the best time of my life. And former guard Warren Hoyt said, I want to see peace in this world. You don't live long

Starting point is 00:14:25 enough to fight all the time. In 1986, Coop organized a reunion of the surviving guards and prisoners on the 40th anniversary of the camp's dissolution. Francis Lang, who'd worked as a civilian foreman at the site, wrote this poem. Way up in North New Hampshire, in a town called Stark, it was there during World War II that history left its mark. It was there in a prison camp that few people ever saw where they kept the German prisoners who were captured in the war. The prisoners were kept under guard, and though they were not free, they were allowed to keep their pride and dignity. The day came when they went home, but this fact will remain, that 40 years would go by before we'd meet again.

Starting point is 00:15:04 but this fact will remain, that forty years would go by before we'd meet again. These young boys, now gray-haired men, had learned to make amends. Those enemies from a distant past had now become good friends. There's nothing where the camp once was, just a plaque that reads with pride, an equal tribute to those men who came from either side. The main story in episode 296 was about the Little League baseball team from Monterrey, Mexico, and their inspiring 1957 championship win against all odds. We heard from a couple of listeners that this story had really touched them, such as one who preferred not to be mentioned by name, who wrote after the episode to say, I just finished listening to episode 296 and I can tell you it is the best one yet, but I might be partial due to the fact that I am Mexican. The story of how the

Starting point is 00:16:05 Monterrey Industriales won the 1957 Little League Championship hit home in a big way. You see, I work at a state hospital with very limited resources, and as you can imagine, we've been having a tough time lately. I miss my family as being away from them is the only way to protect them. Listening to this week's episode made me reflect on how sometimes just taking challenges one day at a time allows us to overcome great obstacles, even when we are separated from our loved ones. Needless to say, I cried a little while listening to the great story of these inspiring kids, but it was good. It was cathartic. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the great work you do and for the hope you inspire through the stories you allow us to remember, giving them life once again through memory. And that really is a good inspiration to have taken from that story, that sometimes we can overcome great obstacles by

Starting point is 00:16:54 taking the challenges one day at a time, just like the Monterey industrials did. Yeah. I have to thank listener Sue Wan for suggesting that. She called it the most beautiful underdog story I've ever seen. Aw, it really is. I'm surprised it's not better known. It's a fantastic story. I know. That is surprising sometimes, how these stories, nobody's ever heard of them. I guess you've heard of them from Mexico maybe, but...

Starting point is 00:17:14 Yeah. It's not that long ago. No, it's not really. And when I contacted the listener whose email I just read more recently to ask about using their email on the show, I asked them if their situation had changed and was told that unfortunately it still has not and they are still having to live apart from their family. So our thoughts do go out to them and to everyone who's dealing with tough times right now. Mike Parlow from Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, also had a follow up on this topic. Hi, Greg and Sharon. Thanks very much for episode 296

Starting point is 00:17:45 about the Little League team from Monterey. A quick story. In the late 90s, our family was living in Vancouver, and we would regularly host, or homestay, young adults that had come to the city for school. The majority of the students came from Japan, Brazil, and Mexico. We had homestayed two or three students from Mexico, and they had all been big soccer fans. With that being the case, when a new student arrived from Mexico, a young man named Roberto, I asked if he liked soccer. Roberto was very tall, perhaps 6'5", and on hearing the question, he drew himself up to his full height and proclaimed, I am from Monterey.

Starting point is 00:18:20 I love baseball. And that is how I first came to hear in great detail about the 1957 team, as well as a few later ones. Love your show. Yeah, a lot of, I can't remember if I said this in the story, on how Messias and some of the other boys who'd been involved got involved in just sustaining baseball in that area, understandably. And apparently, at least in the 90s, it still was the case.

Starting point is 00:18:44 The puzzle from episode 283, spoiler alert, was about a boat's odd behavior that turned out to be due to its being a riverboat casino. Brooke Daugherty, who very helpfully gave me the Kentuckian pronunciation of her name that I would never otherwise have guessed, wrote, Dear Greg and Sharon, I have listened to your podcast for the last couple years but haven't yet written in. I love the mix of history and puzzles. I meant to write in when you all had the puzzle about a floating casino as I worked at one near Louisville, Kentucky. That brings me to my email about episode 296. I'd like to commend Greg on his pronunciation of Louisville. It was delightful to hear it in the Little League story. Hearing about the Monterey Industrials not only play my adopted hometown, but also my natural hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky, greatly amused me.

Starting point is 00:19:32 To bring the story full circle, Owensboro is near the floating casino in Evansville, Indiana, from the puzzle already mentioned. I love finding connections and couldn't keep this one to myself. Keep up the great work. P.S. Sasha will never be replaced as the podcat of my heart. So thanks, Brooke. It seems that we are having trouble replacing Sasha ourselves, but that is something that we are still thinking about. The puzzle in episode 296, another spoiler alert,

Starting point is 00:20:00 was about a man with a stick accidentally killing a man with a log. Dewey, who very helpfully explained his Welsh name, wrote, Hi guys, I am writing to you from New Zealand. For what feels like the first time, I was convinced I solved this week's puzzle of the man and a stick instantly. I thought straight away it was a lumberjack in the process of chopping down a tree. Does a fallen tree become a log? With a stick, axe, when the tree then fell on himself, killing him. So both men were in fact the same man. Needless to say, I was a tad gutted that it was in fact a much wilder and more interesting story of the foul ball and a knife.

Starting point is 00:20:36 Keep up the good work and hope you and all your listeners around the world are doing as well as possible in these crazy times. That seems like a valid solution. It does, actually, I thought. The real solution was kind of out there, so this one actually maybe made a little more sense. In episode 78, we discussed a game that's called Chutes and Ladders or Snakes and Ladders in different countries. I mentioned that there was a Canadian version that used toboggan runs instead of chutes or snakes, and then joked that maybe that was because it's too cold in Canada for snakes or slides. Stuart Lasky wrote, I'm still working my way through the old podcasts and am now on episode

Starting point is 00:21:14 78. I had to pause the episode when I heard Sharon mention that Canada is too cold for snakes when talking about the game Snakes and Ladders. It made me wonder if you've heard about the Narcissus snake dens in my home province of Manitoba. Every spring, when the red-sided garter snake awakes from hibernation, they gather together, numbering over 75,000. The migration happens to cross a highway, which they've had to dig snake tunnels under to reduce the number of snakes being run over each year. Anyway, I hope you don't mind me getting in touch about episodes from five years ago. I'm enjoying the ignorance of not knowing if I'll eventually hear one of my emails read, if you even still do that. Keep up the great work. So hey, Stuart, I don't know when you're actually going to hear this, but we are still doing listener mail,

Starting point is 00:21:59 and yours made it on. I had not heard of the Narcissus snake dens, which are in the interlake region of Manitoba, between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, and contain what's believed to be the largest concentration of snakes anywhere in the world. In that area, winter temperatures can go well below zero, and as snakes are cold-blooded, they need to spend the winter in as warm a spot as they can manage. In the area around Narcissus, the limestone bedrock is very close to the surface of the ground, and over time, weather and water have caused cracks and sinkholes in the limestone, providing entrances for the snakes to a network of small underground caves created by erosion, thus allowing the snakes to get below the frost line in the winter.

Starting point is 00:22:42 The limited number of possible snake dens forces the concentration of all the red-sided garter snakes in the area, resulting in tens of thousands of snakes being in a hole the size of an average living room. In the spring, the 70,000 or so snakes emerge from their dens for their annual mating ritual, during which time they frequently form what are called mating balls, in which a female snake is surrounded by as many as 100 males trying to get her to mate with them. After a two to three week period, the snakes then travel up to 20 kilometers or about 12 miles into the surrounding wetlands to feed on small amphibians. In the fall, they return to their underground dens, where they'll stay until the following spring in a state of brumation, or basically the reptile

Starting point is 00:23:25 version of hibernation. There had been a problem with many of the snakes being run over, which in the early 2000s led to the creation of tunnels under nearby roads and fences to guide the snakes down into the tunnels. And according to the Canadian Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Network, this decreased mortality rates by 75%. The New York Times reports that the early European settlers were not thrilled with the snakes near Narcissus and attempted to exterminate them, but that now they are better appreciated as they bring in thousands of tourists each spring. The Times says that otherwise Narcissus is a near ghost town, but that just as Tokyo has its cherry blossoms and the Netherlands their tulip fields, so Narcissus has its springtime draw of tens of thousands of amorous snakes writhing around in pits. And if that sounds attractive to you and you want to plan a trip there for yourself, I saw multiple sources that suggested that Mother's Day weekend often tended to be a peak sneak viewing time.

Starting point is 00:24:30 I don't know why that struck me as funny as Mother's Day weekend is the best time to go to see this. So okay, apparently Canada isn't too cold for snakes after all. And I did want to mention that if people are squeamish about snakes, they may want to be cautious with the video linked in the show notes. I'm kind of squeamish about snakes, and for me, it was a lot of snakes. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We truly appreciate getting your comments and updates. So if you have any to send to us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:25:12 This puzzle comes from David Roth. I'm currently spending the winter in a cottage just off a farm-to-market road deep in Texas. This particular road is very twisty and has a number of scenic features spread along it. In the early 1990s, the county paid to erect signs at several of these, giving them colorful names. As a result, the county saved money and lives in subsequent years. Why do you suppose that is? What did you call these things? Features? Scenic features. Along the road. Yes. Is the fact that it's a farm-to-market road helpful? I think it just gives you the idea of how rural it is. Okay.

Starting point is 00:25:51 Is that important? Yes. I think so. Sort of, you know, it's deep in the country kind of thing. And where did you say this is? Texas? Yeah, it's deep in Texas, he said. Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:00 So he's in a cottage on a road. Yeah. The road has several... Scenic features. Which have been given names. Very colorful names, deliberately. And that's, you said, saved... Money and lives.

Starting point is 00:26:17 Okay. Do the names count as, I guess, warnings? No. No? No. And I guess, warnings? No. No? No. And yet they save lives? Yes. Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Are there signs at each? Yes. There are signs at each, at the scenic features with the colorful names of the features. Is that what's doing the, I mean, the saving of lives? I would say yes. Like without the signs, this would not work. So if I were new to the area, I didn't know anything about any of this, and we're driving along this road, I'd see one of these signs, see the name of the feature,

Starting point is 00:26:54 whatever that is. Yes. And that would change my behavior, I guess, in some way? Like I'd slow down or something or be aware of some danger? No. No. I'd see the name of the feature. Yes. Would that warn me of the existence of the feature? No. So I'd be aware of that in any case. Probably, yes. It's visible?

Starting point is 00:27:14 Yes. I like the puzzle. But I don't understand. See, I don't have to guess what the names are because that would take forever. No, it doesn't matter what the names are, just that they're memorable. So you said they're naturally occurring, I guess, features,

Starting point is 00:27:36 whatever they are, would you say? No. I don't quite know what I'm asking. No, you wouldn't. No. On a road. Are they hazards? Would you say they're a danger?

Starting point is 00:27:48 They're dangerous to, say, motorists, I guess. Sometimes. Ah. Okay, that helps. So let's take one of them at random. Okay. That's sometimes not dangerous. Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:59 But there are periods when it is. Yes. Like a flood zone or something. Yes. Is it a flood zone? Something similar to that. Okay. So does the name, I guess I already asked this anyway, does the name reminder warn people?

Starting point is 00:28:15 No. That that danger is present? No. I already asked you that. And I think you said it doesn't change, the sign in itself doesn't change people's behavior. They're not expecting the sign to change your behavior. They're expecting you to go along and do whatever you were going to do anyway. Which is drive down the road.

Starting point is 00:28:33 Which is continue to drive down the road, yes. But in the case that something hazardous happens... Yes. The name stays the same, the sign stays the same, is that right? Yes, yes. happens. Yes. The name stays the same. The sign stays the same. Is that right? Yes. Does the sign appear to take on a new meaning in that event? No. The signs are designed, the names are designed to be memorable. Memorable. Is it easy to get lost in this area? No. Memorable name. Meaning, meaning if you drove past it twice, you'd remember it.

Starting point is 00:29:09 No. No, but they're designed so that if you see a sign, you'd be like, oh, that's a really weird name. And it would stick in your mind. And it would stick in your mind. And that's useful. Yes. Let's say because you do get into trouble. Because then you can give people your location?

Starting point is 00:29:30 Yes, that's it. David says, the scenic features in question are river crossings. The road crosses the Guadalupe River multiple times. There are a few bridges, but most are low water crossings. The river is subject to flash floods, which will frequently overrun the road and occasionally sweep cars away. When the river floods over a road, a touring motorist might find themselves stuck in rising water with no clear way to tell emergency services where exactly they are. So giving the river crossings distinctive names like Wagon Wheel and Boneyard made it much easier and faster for rescuers to identify where the stranded motorist was, and so save time,

Starting point is 00:30:05 faster for rescuers to identify where the stranded motorist was, and so save time, money, and possibly some lives. Nobody died. So thanks to David for a possibly life-saving puzzle, and if anyone else has a puzzle they'd like to have us try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our amazing listeners. If you'd like to support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at putilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll not only help support our show, but also get more discussions on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, outtakes, and peeks behind the scenes.

Starting point is 00:30:45 You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see our website for the link. At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 concise curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books,

Starting point is 00:31:00 and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All our music was written and performed by the illustrious Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 303-Camp Stark

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