Old Table Rock Pics

[Phil Lilley]

More pics from the archives of MoDot...

These were taken in 1956. You can see the 1922 White River Bridge, which in now under the lake.

[Rolan Duffield]

Phil:

Thanks for posting the pictures. Really enjoy seeing how Taney and Branson grew.

[MTM]

Thanks Phil. I to like to look at old pictures like that. They are neat to look at. I bet you could buy that property cheap back then. I know what is costs now LOL. If we only knew then what we know now we would all be rich. Thanks for posting them. Ron

[Al Agnew]

Thanks, Phil...

I enjoy seeing old photos like this, but it also makes me sad, to see the White River before the lakes were built. What a magnificent Ozark stream it must have been. The two things that I am most angry at our "forefathers" for doing are

number one, building some MANY lakes on the White--was it necessary to totally drown this greatest of all Ozark smallmouth streams? Wouldn't one or two have been enough? And two, building the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, drowning what was probably the most spectacular canyon landscape on earth.

I have a lot of old Missouri Conservationist magazines, and in one there is a picture of johnboat floaters drifting beneath Virgin Bluff on the James River, now half-buried by Table Rock. Makes me sad every time I see it.

[RSBreth]

The great outdoor writer Charlie Waterman said he just couldn't bear to fish on Table Rock, Taney, or even for trout under Bull Shoals because he had floated from Hootentown to Branson many times, often camping where the James dumped into what was the greatest smallmouth river in the world, the White River.

I wish I could have seen it, too.

Is that the Kimberling bridge?

[Phil Lilley]

Yes- sorry I didn't label it.

[ollie]

Great pics, I too like seeing them. At least I had parents and grandparents that could tell me stories of how it "use to be". I dig that kinda stuff.

[Terry Beeson]

What was that about prior to 1492 there were no taxes, the women did all the work, and the men hunted and fished... and the white man thought he could improve on that?

Sad to say... We do bring it all on ourselves. Maybe the folks in the buggies over around Diggins are a lot smarter than we are.......

Great pics, Phil. I remember coming to Table Rock when I was a kid with my folks and staying at a resort in a cabin right on the lake... and there were no boats on the lake and only one other couple at the resort... and you could not see any houses, golf courses, condos, or anything but squirrels and birds and trees on the shore everywhere you looked....

And tell me somethin' you "ol' timers"... Do I not recall driving "through" Silver Dollar City? It was like a "tourist trap" with craft shops and the like. This would have been like 1962-3 or so.... Maybe it was something else, but I seem to recall it was SDC...

[Fozzy]

I don't agree at all with the people that don't love the lakes on the White, we have one of the best Fishing/Boating/Recreation coridors in the USA. Trout fishing 12 months a year. Bass fishing etc....

The lakes are fantastic.....sure they could've made one Giant lake there but I am pretty happy with what we have...

[UAK squirrelpie]

Fozzy,

are you sure you don't work for the corps' PR department?