Flipping through wrinkled 50-year-old Missouri travel guides offers visions of a welcoming state from long ago, before the 1992 I-70 Killer made the slogan "Where Highway Hospitality is Tops" seem awfully ironic.
One guide reads, "Missouri's modern highways are built today to serve the needs of tomorrow," but how does the present compare to the glossy pages printed in the 1960s as culture and technology have progressed?
The Show-Me State was called "Family Vacationland" by the Division of Commerce and Industrial Development. One of its popular vacation destinations remains the Lake of the Ozarks, touted as the premier Midwest getaway.
A rural community evolves
Bagnell Dam created the lake by impounding Osage River in the Ozarks region. A lot of the businesses on its strip retain a regionally rural style. On a spring afternoon in April, gray-haired men parked classic cars in front of beer and burger joints. Old Time Photos offered monochrome photography with period attire. Easy Street Dessert & Wine Bar prepared to open.
"The strip still maintains a lot of its old character," said Mike Page, lifetime resident and owner of several lake-area businesses, who also heads the Lake Ozark Betterment Committee. "The strip is funky. It's both family and nightlife. It's kind of always been that way. For the most part, as these new things come along, we try to maintain the old character and architecture."
But there are some unique additions to the old strip. High school students gathered around a Taiwanese bubble tea stand beside the Thai restaurant. Some of the lake area's old mom-and-pop resorts have been replaced by corporate condominiums. Part of an old motel is being converted into an escape room - a life-size puzzle inspired by video games - aptly named Lake Escape.
"Obviously the lake has changed a lot over the years, just as everything else in the country has changed," Page said. "It's not the sleepy little community with fishing and waterskiing that it used to be, that's for sure. But a lot of its charm remains. People still come here for the beauty of the lake. We don't have as many of the little resorts that we used to have, but that has switched to where people stay in condos, just like everywhere else in the country."
Page said the lake area will likely continue to develop as a place for second homes and retirement as well as vacations. The challenge is keeping the strip's eclectic rural atmosphere along the way.
Growing sport blossoms
According to a '60s travel guide, motorboating was considered the fastest-growing sport in the state at the time. It's still flourishing, if the increasing Lake of the Ozarks Shootout attendance is any indication.
The motor sport was gaining ground on traditional kayaking and canoeing, and now engines have replaced paddles for many boaters. While the old forms of boating are being revitalized over the summer at Ha Ha Tonka State Park by the Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance, the masses are coming to the lake for the Shootout's high-speed entertainment.
The Shootout began in 1988, when a group of boaters requested support for speed trials on a closed course. They wanted to determine the fastest boat on the lake, and three local fire departments offered assistance.
"Performance boating at the Lake of the Ozarks has been popular for a long time," said Ron Duggan, owner of Captain Ron's Bar and Grill. "They started doing (the Shootout) every year, and the fire departments got more and more involved, and they started trying to raise some money for the fire departments through this event, and it just grew for about 19 years."
Captain Ron's Bar and Grill began hosting in 2008 when Shooters 21 closed. Attendance increases yearly, and Duggan said almost $1 million has been donated to charity through the event since 2008.
The Shootout has become an international affair. Its current Top Gun record holder is the 50-foot Spirit of Qatar at 244 mph in 2014. It dwarfs 21-foot boats that once sped through the Shootout at merely 100 mph. The Mystic powerboat, driven by owner Sheikh Hassan bin Jabor Al-Thani, of Qatar, was built specifically to break that record.
"They had about $22 million to build this boat and put a crew together from all over the world," Duggan said. "It's kind of a must-see event. The spectator crowd is up to 120,000 people now."
Amenity evolution
More people on the lake didn't necessarily translate to better business for the Ozark Opry, a quintessential remnant of the area's past, located off the water in Osage Beach.
The Ozark Opry - credited for helping put Lake of the Ozarks on the map - can now be enjoyed only through its albums, KRCG broadcasts and the Ozark Opry Museum. But at its height, it boasted 10 shows a week.
Opry founder Lee Mace, a local boy with a bucolic voice, created the first area comedy and country variety show.
Mace once said, "The first thing (tourists ask is), 'Where in the world can we find a hillbilly?'" He liked to point to himself and say they already found one.
Back then, the lake was where city slickers came to find characters from "The Shepherd of the Hills." Although he embraced the hillbilly brand, Mace wanted to make the place he loved into more than a novelty, according to his wife, Joyce.
The museum shares a building with a Sears in the old Opry hall.
Joyce, Lee's partner in life and business, rented most of the space to Sears and opened the museum years after the Opry closed in 2005. Three glass cases display Lee's original stand bass with a baseball bat neck, along with other memorabilia from the old days.
"If someone's car broke down in the parking lot, Lee would give you his car and say to leave the keys with the ticket booth when they were done with it," sound tech and musician Jim Phinney said.
"Those were different times," Opry assistant Cathy DeGraffenreid added.
"You wouldn't do that these days," Joyce concluded.
The Opry peaked after Lee - the star emcee, bassist and producer - died in a 1985 plane crash in Gladstone Cove near Gravois Mills.
Phinney said the opry ran on the motto, "The show must go on," and they knew Lee, who never missed a performance, wouldn't have wanted it to stop when he died.
"It was hard, but I knew that everybody needed a job, and we just had to do it," Joyce said, looking as though she might cry but deciding to smile instead. She took over as executive producer and kept the show going another 20 years, and DeGraffenreid assured Joyce that Lee was proud of her.
"It shows how far Lee got the opry that it took 20 years to coast to a stop," Phinney said.
Exercise equipment is on display where the stage once was, but Phinney said he can still feel the music emanating from the walls.
In the end, the development Lee dreamed of helped lead Joyce to close the Opry. She said Lee had wanted the roads expanded to bring in more tourists, but many Osage Beach residents fought against it. After Lee's death, the Missouri Department of Transportation built Osage Beach Parkway, but the road expansion cut into the Opry's parking lot. Attendance was down, as well. Joyce said tourists rarely need to leave the shore for entertainment with live music at lakeside bars like Shady Gators. "And I wasn't getting any younger," she said.
Osage Beach City Administrator Jeana Woods said that area of Osage Beach has become a retail hub with clusters of businesses, after a sewer and water system expansion offered opportunities for places like Osage Beach Premium Outlets, Prewitt's Point Shopping Center and Lakeview Pointe Shopping Center to house local and corporate retail businesses.
"Over the past decades, we've been fortunate enough to see a lot of positive growth to our economic base here in Osage Beach," Woods said. "We were the first in the area to really go with a major water and sewer system. That brought attraction from developers. Retail attracts retail, and restaurants want to be around restaurants, so with that the change grew from there."
The show is still going on at Main Street Music Hall, where classic rock and electric guitars moved over traditional banjo numbers. "It's more like the CMA awards than it is the Grand Ole Opry," owner Judy Blair said.
She has also noticed more tourists staying on the water than when her theater opened in 1987, but she said there are also more potential customers if venues can reel them in.
Quaint past meets
modish future
In the '60s, the lake was a prime spot for honeymooners who wanted an affordable getaway. They spent summers days waterskiing over smooth waters in the main channel. Small cabins were occasional gaps in wooded shoreline.
The lake isn't the hideaway it once was. Despite strides to maintain a rural spirit, modernity reached the Ozarks. The Tom Sawyer Paddle Wheeler tours are no more, but there are multiple luxury yacht cruises to choose from. The Ozark Opry is gone, but nationally known touring acts now visit the numerous concert venues. Condos and houses line the shores, with the real estate market expected to grow through 2017. The main channel can be the sort of bustling thoroughfare waterskiers loath. Paradise Cove's pyramid-stacking Ozark Water Ski Thrill Show is gone, but now people can jet around on water-propelled flyboards.
The changing times have brought economic gains and cultural prestige to the lake. Its progression from low-key hideaway to a getaway for celebrities has benefited many people. But some still look back on the old days of little cabins and open waters with nostalgia.
Lake area historian and writer H. Dwight Weaver remembers the lake as it was in the old travel guide photos. He recalls the past with some longing. The winner of the Missouri Humanities Council's Exemplary Community Achievement Award summed up the lake's progression by saying, "In the 53 years that I've lived at the lake I've seen it change from a remote, laid-back getaway for the middle class of the Midwest to a playground for the affluent in our society who love their $500,000 boats and houses. It's not your grandpa's lake anymore."
There are a few places where people can pretend it's still yesteryear at the lake. There's nothing but nature on the opposing side of the Grand Glaize Arm from a peaceful beach near Lakeview Bend Trail in Lake of the Ozarks State Park. Party Cove is not far away, and bass fishing tournaments are regularly held on the arm. The bluffs and trees extend around the bend.
The area parks are respites from most economic development, offering small sections of nature protected from the gears of time and progress. The air is fresh and full of bird songs, the lake's original soundtrack.
But this is 2017, and few things last forever. A couple fishing boats motor by, drowning out the birds' songs. A child's plastic Batman-themed kite ruffles in the breeze, stuck in a tree - a tree with branches old enough to remember catching kites made by hand with sticks and fabric.