Bagnell Dam Boulevard

Description

By Dwight Weaver

Lake Ozark, Missouri, is a city along the edges near Bagnell Dam – the edges of Lake of the Ozarks and the edges of Bagnell Dam Boulevard. The Boulevard, steeped in 80 years of memorable history, stretches for three miles. It is strewn from end-to-end with buildings of all kinds, compelling attractions, and businesses needed to support one of the largest recreational playgrounds of the Midwest. How the Boulevard and its built environment came to be is the story this book tells in photos and text.
It doesn’t just celebrate the old and almost forgotten places along the Boulevard but also preserves images of the recently built and very new. And the people who turned this three-mile stretch of road along the Ozark ridge of the Bagnell Dam Strip, and up and over the hills bordering bluffs that overlook some of the Lake’s most beautiful scenery, are not forgotten. They made it all possible.
The old dancehalls, rock cabins, gift shops, and attractions of the past are remembered as well as the wonderful excursion boats our grandparents and parents enjoyed in the years of the Great Depression, World War II, and the nostalgic rock-and-roll years of the 1950’s and 60’s.
This is a one-of-a-kind guidebook for its goes door-to-door as you travel the Boulevard, exploring the history of the roadside with a collection of nearly 400 images, some of them rare and never before seen in print. It is a souvenir of the past and present.