No matter how many shows you take in or how much shopping you do while here in Branson, take the time to try athletics and outdoor sports. Mix a little exercise into even your busiest trips, or at least take a look around. Even if you don’t venture off The Strip, try walking it. It isn’t all that long, and you may be surprised at how much you can see on foot while walking that you miss when in your car surrounded by traffic.
The great outdoors here in the Ozarks is so great that we actually have two chapters devoted to it. If you miss fishing, floating, boating, and waterskiing in this chapter, that’s because the Lakes and Rivers chapter covers those outdoor activities. In this chapter we cover “the land activities” in the great outdoors and other types of recreation you’ll find in the Branson area.
Most of the folks who live in the Ozarks are into the outdoors, and it’s easy to see why the Ozarks would be home to Bass Pro Shops. Lots of folks like to hunt, fish, boat, golf, or hike in what has been described as a sport lover’s paradise. Our highways and roadsides are lined with wildflowers. People inside the Branson city limits put out salt for deer that nibble the shrubbery; sometimes you can see the deer even from motels on The Strip. We may have the neon glitz and glitter of The Strip and traffic so thick during the season you can’t stir it with a stick, but we are also only a half hour’s drive from some of the best free-flowing floating streams in the nation and wilderness areas so untouched that you can hike for days and not see a soul.
Development in Branson has changed the nature of the hills, and we do have some raw-looking road cuts that have not yet had the softening weathering experience of rain, frost, and lichens. But the nature that drew visitors here at the turn of the 19th century is still abundantly evident. As soon as high-pressure boilers allowed small steamboats to come up the White River in the 1850s, anglers and hunters came to the Ozarks. Often they’d have to spend a year because the river was only navigable in spring during high water. Sometimes they’d choose to leave via wagon or horseback later in the year rather than wait until the next spring to take a steamboat back down the White. With the coming of the railroad, the Ozarks became more accessible to sports enthusiasts. Game was plentiful. The scenery was breathtaking. The plow’s touch was confined to the fertile bottomlands. That which attracted Harold Bell Wright into the Ozarks at the turn of the 20th century can still be found. The Shepherd of the Hills has a cast of characters that are as big as the Ozarks’ out-of-doors, and Young Matt, the hero, and Sammy Lane, the heroine, still cast a romantic shadow on our landscape.
Dams on the White River have changed forever the terrain and nature of the Ozarks, but the area continues to invite exploration. Our rivers and streams, lakes, woods, and balds are becoming more accessible than ever to today’s hikers, bikers, campers, and nature lovers. Thanks to better roads, a better appreciation by locals of their own outdoor environment, and the development of private, city, state, and federal parks and wilderness areas, more people than ever can appreciate the beauty that we who live here have so often taken for granted.
Long before the belch of the tour bus echoed off the highways, the purr of the motorboat reverberated across lakes and the whir of the fly reel competed with the gurgle of streams. For those who know Branson only as the home of music shows, a production of an entirely different kind awaits in nature’s own amphitheater, with a cast of thousands, a score that is truly surround sound, and lighting of the most spectacular subtlety and beauty. The prologue to the modern-day drama that is Branson tourism can be found in the lakes and rivers that wind in, around, and among the Ozark hills, valleys, and plateaus. Because of the dams and lakes created in the 20th century, the White River in Missouri is no more, but its legacy is the advent of tourism in the Ozarks.
When the first railroads lumbered into the area around the turn of the 20th century, they brought more than just the timber industry and commercial agriculture. They brought the angler, hunter, and outdoor lover, who saw a bottomless pool of recreational natural resources in the crystal-clear waters of the lakes and streams. Waterfront resorts sprouted from the hillsides, and vacationers from all over came in ever-increasing droves to enjoy swimming, boating, fishing, hiking, and camping. Each new dam-made lake brought a new burst of pleasure boaters, who left economic growth and even more commercial development in their wake.
To provide the tourists with a little after-hours diversion, the first music show made its entrance some three decades ago. Today, Branson is a glittering, internationally renowned entertainment city, with scores of performers who strut their stuff upon the stage nightly. From season to season they come and they go, followed into town today and out of town tomorrow by the fan clubs, the tour buses, and the whole neon hype of show business. Through it all, the lakes and the rivers remain, as popular today as yesterday, with no more advertisement needed than their very existence.
In the following sections we merely skip stones across the vast surface of the river of knowledge about Ozark lakes and rivers. Words alone cannot impart the thrill of hooking your first big trout on Lake Taneycomo; they cannot describe the serenity of a shady afternoon float down Swan Creek. The magnificence of the Ozark lakes and rivers can only be truly experienced in person. Once experienced, perhaps you will find yourself returning to the Ozarks again and again for an encore performance of what might turn out to be your favorite show of all, with yourself cast in the leading role and played out upon the scenic splendor of our beloved Ozarks waterways.
Long before the word tourism entered the vocabulary of native Ozarkians, people were coming to these parts to escape city life, fish in the rivers, hunt in the woods, and take in the clean, natural air of the Ozark Mountains. Some of them stayed with their country relatives, but most camped out along the White River, the James River, and, after 1913, Lake Taneycomo. After Table Rock Lake Dam was completed in 1958, small commercial campgrounds began popping up around the newly impounded lake to meet the demand of outdoors lovers, who by now were making regular trips to the area. When the Mabe brothers began offering these campers a little weekend musical entertainment out of an old roller-skating rink, the word tourism became common around here.
In a sense, not much has changed. The Mabe brothers are still entertaining, only now they have a fancy place on The Strip called the Baldknobbers Jamboree Theatre, and campers are still coming to enjoy the scenery and to hunt and fish. The major difference today is that their reason for coming has changed. They come for the entertainment, and while they’re here they camp out.
Campgrounds and RV parks are big business in Branson. People aren’t just coming to camp lakeside anymore. Many of the more than 5,000 campsites in the area are smack-dab in the middle of town. The list of amenities at these places would make one of the earliest campers either jealous or offended. We’ve got campgrounds with swimming pools, laundry facilities, grocery stores, car rentals, video arcades, full-service marinas, and more electricity than you can shake a stick at. Some of them are so popular they even host entire conventions.
Fortunately for those who prefer primitive camping, we still have plenty of places without cable television and phones. They are more the exception than the rule, however. If you’re looking to really rough it, we suggest the nearby Mark Twain National Forest or the Hercules Glades Wilderness Area within the forest. You can call the National Park Service at (417) 732-2662 for information.