PINEVILLE, Mo. — A country music singer from southwest Missouri is back home again — and ready for a big weekend. Kenny Ray Horton will perform tomorrow afternoon during the 4th annual “Pineville Fall Festival.”
Originally from Rocky Comfort, Missouri, he retired from the U.S. Navy in March, after 21 years of service. He started as an electronics technician, before becoming the frontman for the U.S. Navy band, “Country Current,” where he traveled across the country doing high-profile shows.
Recently — he’s been working on a new album.
“We’ve got some, some great music that showcases home. It talks a lot about things that all of us around here know. The old back roads that were never showing up on GPS, you know, and how you rely on the rain as farmers. Of course, there’s other people in the nation that do that, as well, but this is where I grew up and this is what I know,” said Kenny Ray Horton, Singer.
Pineville’s Fall Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 4 tomorrow.
PINEVILLE, Mo. — With a beautiful piece of land in McDonald County and a family knowledge of “craft distilling,” Tara and Jody Cook decided to take a chance on opening a small distillery business in Pineville, Missouri that would come to be known as Tall Pines Distillery MO.
Opening in January of 2020, Tall Pines became the first legal distillery in McDonald County since the days of prohibition, distilling whiskey, brandy and moonshine.
To quickly start their revenue stream, Tall Pines Distillery MO would get an operating jump start from a distillery in Salisbury, Pennsylvania with a very similar name that was experiencing a lot of regional and national growth: Tall Pines Distillery.
The Cook family said they became interested several years ago in the quality and taste of the products distilled by Tall Pines, and asked if they could make the product at their newly opened Pineville location.
“Tall Pines agreed and so that allowed us to have product when we opened the door. It allowed us to get off the ground sooner because if we would have waited for some of our products that are aging, it could have been four or five years down the road before we would have had something to sell,” said Tara Cook.
And like their namesake, is wasn’t long before Tall Pines Distillery MO began to see growth of their own.
“We already realized we should have built the building bigger. When we can get to the point where we can start distributing, we will definitely have to add on, and then we’ll be bringing on employees,” said Tara Cook.
A recent report generated by Report Linker states that an increasing number of consumers globally are looking for new, more exciting spirit offerings, compared to their usual spirit options, therefor pushing the revenue generation in to the craft spirits market.
The craft spirits market is increasingly being benefitted by the growing number of craft spirit distilleries, such as Tall Pines Distillery MO.
According to the American Craft Spirit Association, in 2018, the number of active craft distilleries in the United States grew by 15.5% to 1,835 distilleries.
The report states that a mere 10-years ago, there were just 455 craft distilleries in the United States. In the fall of 2021, there were 2,290 craft distilleries in operation.
Although many of those distilleries were negatively affected by the COVID pandemic, most that are operating today were able to find ways to survive and continue making their products.
For several months, Tall Pines Distillery MO started making a product that became highly sought after.
“To keep our business going, we actually switched to making sanitizer for several regional hospitals, like Mercy in Joplin. That’s what helped us make it through the shutdown time,” said Tara Cook.
Despite a record 56 distillery closures in the U.S. in 2020, the craft segment saw the opening of 33 more distilleries than in 2019. One of those new distilleries to open their doors in 2020: Tall Pines Distillery MO.
In the next four years, the number of new craft distilleries is expected to significant ramp up, with a predicted 265 set to open in 2025 alone.
“Now that the pandemic is over, we’re seeing the business of distilling begin to grow steadily. We’re now doing a lot of marketing to get the word out,” said Cook.
What’s pictured is all that’s left of a tulip poplar tree that was planted in Pineville, Missouri. The tree, which was once a seedling, was grafted from the last standing 400-year-old “Revolutionary Era Liberty Tree.”
PINEVILLE, Mo. — A unique tree in Pineville, Missouri that’s seeded in America’s history, is vandalized, and now city officials are asking for help from the public to find the person or persons responsible.
The vandalism took place at the Pineville bike park along Big Sugar Creek Road.
Back in 2017, the Arbor Day Foundation contacted the city of Pineville and asked if they would be interested in planting a very special tree in their city.
Because of the history tied to the tree, city officials couldn’t say ‘no.’
The tree given to the city of Pineville is a “Tulip Poplar.”
The poplar, which started out as a seedling, was grafted from the last standing “Revolutionary Era Liberty Tree.”
That tree was a 400-year-old Tulip Poplar from Annapolis, Maryland, which was destroyed by hurricane-force winds in 1999.
“The Liberty Tree was called that, because back during the Revolutionary War, they actually gathered up folks and said, ‘hey, go to this tree.’ That would be where people gathered up to fight during the Revolutionary War, so they nicknamed them Revolutionary Trees. These trees were good meeting spots because they were just huge, huge shade trees, and were easy to spot from a distance,” said Pineville Mayor, Gregg Sweeten.
Several seedlings were grafted from that last standing “Revolutionary Era Liberty Tree,” and distributed to cities across the country.
One of those cities to receive the special seedling was Pineville.
This tulip poplar, planted by the Missouri 4-H, started out as a seedling that was bud-grafted from the last standing “Revolutionary Era Liberty Tree,” that stood tall for more than 400 years.
Sweeten said that after it was planted in 2017 by the Missouri 4-H, the tree grew to a current height of 10 feet, that is until it was deliberately broken down near the tree’s base sometime Thursday (7/14).
“We’re heartbroken. I mean, we’re just literally heartbroken. If anybody knows anything, we’re asking you to please contact our 911 center, and they’ll get the information to our Marshal’s Office. Somebody needs to be held responsible for this senseless act,” said Sweeten.
Early today (7/14), Sweeten contacted a local arbor nursery to see if any of the tree’s seedlings can be salvaged and replanted.
“We contacted a gentleman who lives here in Pineville. His family has a nursery, and he actually took and clipped some of the tree’s leaves, and they’re going to try to wrap those on to some other tulip poplar trees. We’re hoping that will take hold and take growth. So we’re working with several folks who are trying to do everything they can to save this priceless piece of living history,” said Sweeten.
A tree that was grafted as a seedling from the last living “Revolutionary era Liberty Tree,” is vandalized in Pineville, Missouri.
Sweeten said he’s also focused on catching and punishing the person or persons responsible for the vandalism.
“We definitely would like to have some help from the public to be able to punish whoever is responsible. We’re going to have to work with our prosecutor to try and figure out what the appropriate punishment would be for breaking what I believe is a historical item,” stated Sweeten.
If you have any information on the vandalism of the historic Tulip Poplar tree, you can contact the Pineville Police Department at (417) 223-4369.
PINEVILLE, Mo. — An organization in McDonald County is helping families.
“McDonald County Parents as Teachers” helps families identify developmental delays and corrects them.
“There’s Play-Doh which of course is great fine motor for squeezing and pushing and pulling and making cookies with playdough. Your talking about colors and mixing colors,” said Dalana Fuller, McDonald County Parent Educator.
Tuesday night “Parents as Teachers” held its holiday family fun night at the Pineville Community Center.
“It gives us a chance for us to watch other children and parents with the children, but it also gives us a chance to see the kids and how they interact. And we are always looking for a delay or help a child become better at what they are doing and the parents also,” said Fuller.
Parents as Teachers is a free program that helps diagnose and correct developmental issues in children.
“It’s a home based program. So we go into the home and we play games with them, but we also give them developmental information. We talk about milestones, we do screenings for hearing and vision we do screenings for development so you can be on top of where your child is. Because unless you go to the doctor a lot of people don’t know what’s expected of their child at a certain age,” said Fuller.
The program helps 60 families a year.
“One of my daughters we found out she had a speech delay. It got to the point where you could hardly understand what she was saying when she was younger. And then we started to notice that certain letters weren’t forming correctly so that’s why we decided to get the help,” said Cassandra Scott, used P.A.T.
It took less than eight months of intervention at school to fix the problem.
“She is doing amazing in school. She is in fourth grade now. and she has excelled tremendously,” said Scott.
Tonight kids were given a free book and information on the programs offered in McDonald County.
To make an appointment with parents as teachers call McDonald County Central Office at (417) 845-3321.
PINEVILLE, Mo. – A local service dog organization is hosting a poker run fundraiser.
The Saber Life Foundation was founded by the family of a girl from Pineville, Missouri who has a debilitating condition and needed a service dog. The foundation helps cover some of the costs of getting a service dog, which can run more than 18-thousand dollars. So they are raising money through the pipes for pups poker run which will run 150 miles through Arkansas and Missouri.
“It started with our daughter, that she needed a service dog, and so we started fundraising for her at local events in our community selling dog treats,” said Saber Life President Danea Key. “And so once we were meeting so many people that needed a service dog, knew someone that needed one, or had one. We decided at that point that we wanted to pay it forward once we got our daughters service dog paid for.”
The poker run will be on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. There will be prizes including a raffle for a 2005 Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle.
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