Vanishing Lake Landmarks

By: Dwight Weaver

The Lake of the Ozarks region is strewn with cultural, commercial and industrial artifacts, features of the landscape that include buildings, structures and objects, some of which are significant to the area’s history, architecture, archaeology and culture. Our local historical societies (Benton, Camden, Miller and Morgan counties) strive to preserve what artifacts and ephemera they can. This largely consists of images, text, and relatively modest-sized man-made artifacts and a few of the possessions of better known, pioneers, natives or long-timers of the region. The preservation of historic buildings, bridges and other structures (except the building they are in) is ignored because the structures would be too costly to attempt to buy, save and maintain. As a consequence, we are steadily losing our visual, educational and cherished links to the Lake’s past. Our children and grandchildren will eventually feel the impact of this thoughtless behavior. They are being robbed of much of their Lake region heritage.
Only a few landmarks of the Lake of the Ozarks region’s earliest history along the banks of the Osage River survive to remind us of how it used to be without paying a visit to a local historical society museum. Among those is the old stone Iron Smelter dating to the 1870s that sits with its feet in the Lake in Bollinger Cove at the 44 mile mark. Another monument to the past, one almost entirely forgotten by everyone except fishermen, sits in the bed of the Osage River about one mile below the Highway 54 twin bridges below Bagnell Dam. It is the old Bagnell Water Gauge Tower. Five-feet-square made of concrete and rising some 25 feet in the air, it once had a bridge connecting it to the river bank. It was used to gauge depths of the Osage River and was built more than 120 years ago. Also remaining are some of the rock wing dams in the Osage River that were built to improve navigation for steamboats.
Nothing built for tourism since the construction of Bagnell Dam is 100 years old yet, a tool many people use to justify tearing down the old for something new. There are now so many building codes and restrictions operative that trying to save an old building, commercial or otherwise, for posterity is nearly impossible. As the saying goes, you can preserve it only if you can afford to buy it, restore it and maintain it.
The destruction began early and sometimes loss was due to causes not attributable to “progress.” The quaint and historic Gov. McClurg Mansion that sat along the Lake shore at the mouth of Linn Creek Cove burned in the 1940s. A marina now occupies its former location. The historic Snyder Mansion, better known as the “Ha Ha Tonka Castle” burned in the 1940s and left us with ruins in a unique geological area that has, fortunately, become a state park, where that history can be celebrated.
In the 1960s we lost Our Lady of the Lake Chapel along the highway in Lake Ozark. It was built entirely out of native materials and was much loved. Developers, it is said, made sure it was bulldozed down over-night to thwart the “save the church building” group that was being organized. Nothing was saved. More recently we lost Arrowhead Lodge, a much venerated structure. Across the road from the former site of Arrowhead Lodge stands the original Knifebird Indian Shop rock building of the same age. How much longer will it survive? No one knows.
Other structures of special historic value at the Lake’s east end include the White House Hotel building, currently vacant, and the rock-veneered Hennessey building which houses Old Time Photos, both on the Bagnell Dam Strip. In Osage Beach stands the old cobblestone-veneered Osage Beach Hotel building on Lake Road 54-24. Both Linn Creek and Camdenton downtown areas have several buildings of historic vintage dating from the early 1930s.
The early developers of resorts and fishing camps often built with log and rock because it imparted the rustic look, the materials were easily obtained and economical. We’ve lost the vast majority of these buildings. A few lonely ones, however, stand here and there among the trees along Lake roads, including a few giraffe-rock houses built in the 1930s by Tommy Forrester and other local architects. One of Forrester’s crowning achievements was the Pla Port Lighthouse. We lost it in the early 1960s to new development.
Eldon, Barnett, Versailles, Stover, Cole Camp and Warsaw all contain historic buildings and some efforts have been made in several of these communities to save some of their more cherished architectural and historic structures. Gravois Mills also possesses several street-front buildings of early Lake vintage.
We have a few swinging bridges built by Joe Dice left at both the east and west end of the Lake that are being preserved. Only the Hurricane Deck Bridge survives to remind us of the three scenic view bridges we once had. The original Grand Glaize Bridge and Niangua bridges have been replaced. Engineering integrity, enhanced traffic movement and safety are the issues with these bridges.
Thank goodness Bagnell Dam, our largest and most impressive engineering marvel, as well as Oak Lodge, Willmore Lodge, and the Water Tower that crowns the hill above the Dam, are beyond the reach of private developers

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