Museums Offer Fascination, Surprises
at Central Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks
Lake of the Ozarks, Mo. – The vast majority of visitors to Central Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks come for boating, skiing, swimming and fishing. The Lake area also offers antique, outlet and specialty store shopping … down-home to upscale dining …and fun family attractions like show caves, mini-golf, arcades, go-karts – and museums.
At the Lake of the Ozarks, visitors can find five fascinating museums. Three are operated by county historical societies, featuring artifacts and exhibits about the area’s past. Another tells the story of the construction of Bagnell Dam which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary. And the fifth museum is all about the sun, moon, stars, planets and dinosaurs too!
Historical Museums
The Camden County, Miller County and Morgan County museums offer three intriguing glimpses into the Lake area’s past.
The Camden County Museum is in Linn Creek in the old white-painted, one-story Linn Creek School, built in 1930 and used until the mid 1970s. On Rt. V just off Highway 54, it’s a U-shaped building where elementary classes were taught on one side, high school on the other. Today each classroom is its own mini-museum, focusing on a particular subject. For example, there’s the Pioneer School with double-seat desks, little tin lunch pails, slates, a bell and a genuine dunce cap. Another room has old typewriters and office equipment plus the original cashier’s window and vault from the old Camden County Bank. Scary-looking medical equipment from the past, donated by local doctors, occupies another room, and a former funeral home contributed an array of rather sobering items.
At the museum you also can see an antique judge’s bench and jury box, vintage household items and furniture, old tools and barbed wire displays, a scale model of an old grist mill and a truly fascinating display of photos of all the churches of Camden County. There also are displays about the area’s Civil War history plus arrowheads and Osage Indian artifacts – and much more. Most of the items are donated or loaned by local families, says Daphne Jeffries, president of the Camden County Historical Society.
The museum is open April-October. Throughout the year, however, the historical society sponsors book, art and crafts sales, dances, garage sales, crafts classes, holiday events, and the Museum Players & Dinner Theatre, directed by Jeffries. These activities, plus historical society memberships, help raise money to keep admission free. In addition, the Ozark Weavers group works on vintage looms at the museum to create woven rugs that are sold in the gift shop. An old-fashioned quilting bee takes place every Monday, and people regularly stop by the museum to consult the genealogical records.
The Miller County Museum is on West Hwy. 52 in the former Anchor Mill building in Tuscumbia – but not for long. By year’s end, the current exhibits and items now in storage will move from the giraffe-stone 1943 building to their new home to be built next door. “The building will be 4,000 square feet and will offer more space for exhibits as well as an environment less crowded and more visitor-friendly than the stone building,” says Miller County Historical Society Building Committee Chairman Joe Pryor, a Kansas City physician who recently returned to his Miller County roots. “We will continue to use the stone building for office space, research and meetings.” The new building also will store genealogical records in a climate-controlled area. “It won’t be hard to fill up,” adds Historical Society President Sharon Cogdill.
In the meantime, the museum offers an overview of Ozarks pioneer and folk life. Exhibits feature early home furnishings, toys, fashions, kitchenware, country handicrafts and more from the former antique shop of area resident Nova Humphrey Land. A collection of musical instruments and machines was donated by the late Ozarks performer, Lee Mace. “Donations come from just about everywhere,” Cogdill says. “People who have moved away send back old family things.” Other displays focus on a one-room school house (complete with dunce cap), early medicine, the Civil War and Osage Indians.
Also on the property are two authentic, reassembled log cabins from the area in which numerous children from the Lupardus and McDonald families were born and raised, Cogdill notes. Memberships, an ice cream social, chili supper and holiday events help raise funds for the museum.
Built in 1877, the landmark Martin Hotel at 120 N. Monroe St. in Versailles is home to the Morgan County Historical Museum. Its 28 rooms are packed with so many antiques, artifacts, oddities and Martin family memorabilia, it would take a full day to see the amazing collection. The edited museum tour, led by Director and Curator (and coincidentally named) Carl Morgan, takes about an hour and a half.
“I’ve always been a history buff,” says Morgan, a retiree from St. Louis. When he moved to the area, he says, he stopped by the old hotel “on a whim, and I just fell in love.” He signed up to be a volunteer before taking on the director’s job. Under Morgan’s leadership, the Morgan County Historical Society in 2006 received a $15,000 matching grant from members of the Martin family, which will be used to complete a variety of repairs throughout the museum.
Opened in 1877 by Samuel and Elizabeth Martin who came to Versailles in a covered wagon from Virginia, the Martin Hotel was, until it closed in 1972, the oldest hotel continuously operated by one family in the United States. Back then, Morgan notes, a room and three meals cost one dollar. After Samuel passed away, Elizabeth ran the hotel until just before her death at age 103. It was a stop on the Butterfield Stagecoach line.
Starting in the lobby, Morgan will show you the original desk and room keys, and the registry with the signatures of Frank James, P.T. Barnum, and two Presidents: Grover Cleveland and Harry S Truman. The original Seth Thomas clock is still running, the 10-foot cobweb broom still stands in the corner and the “drummer’s table” where salesmen displayed their wares features sample books and swatches from an early 20th-century Chicago tailor.
Upstairs, most of the former guest rooms hold furnishings and artifacts relating to a theme, such as the Weaving Room with old looms, Quilt Room, Chapel, Children’s Room, War Room, Bride Room with gowns from 1860-1920, Tool Room, Barber Shop, 1927 Beauty Parlor with a frightening permanent wave machine, plus the Country School Room, Doctors Office with a bleeding machine, Old Post Office, Parlor, an early 20th century kitchen and a lot more. On the third-floor in the maids’ quarters you can see the old bell system used to summon a servant. “We had to dig through eight layers of wallpaper in many places,” Morgan says. “We found some really weird looking linoleum floors too.”
Genealogical records are kept in an old bank vault, including written histories from local families. Nothing in the museum is roped off or off-limits. “We don’t say you can’t touch anything,” Morgan says. “We want you to come in and experience the past.” The museum is open from mid-March through late November or by appointment. Admission is free; however, Morgan says, donations are gladly accepted.
The Dam and Dinosaurs
Built in 1930, Willmore Lodge, located northeast of Bagnell Dam on Bus. Hwy. 54, served as Union Electric’s administrative and entertainment center for the mammoth Bagnell Dam construction project. The impressive 6,500-square-foot, Adirondack-style lodge was designed by Louis La Beaume, a noted St. Louis architect whose résumé included work on the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 World’s Fair). It was built by Stone and Webster Engineering Corp., which also managed the dam project.
The two-story, 29-room building was constructed of Western white pine logs. It was assembled in Oregon, then marked, taken apart and transported to the Ozarks by rail. Finally it was reassembled at its present site using only square wooden pegs and overlapping corner saddle notchings to hold it together. Stone for the patios and fireplace came from area quarries. The total cost was about $135,000.
In 1945 Union Electric sold the lodge and adjacent property to Cyrus Crane Willmore for $320,000. Other owners came and went and in 1996 Union Electric re-acquired Willmore Lodge for $1.06 million. Two years later it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Today Willmore Lodge houses the offices of the Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, a cultural activities center and a fascinating museum focusing on the Osage River, the engineering project that became Bagnell Dam and development of the Lake of the Ozarks. The story is told through displays in five rooms. Room 1 spotlights “Before the Dam,” with exhibits about the prehistoric peoples of the area and the Osage Indians. In Room 2, “Designing the Dam,” visitors can view blueprints, plans and actual wooden models used for the project. Room 3 is “Dam Operation,” with a look at how a hydroelectric plant works. Room 4, “Geology and Geography,” discusses the Osage River and Lake-area economy and displays the Missouri State Record Paddlefish, a whopper weighing 134 pounds. The final room has displays about the dam and the Lake area today. The museum is open year-round and admission is free.
The Orion Center Science Museum and Planetarium, on Hwy. 5 one mile south of Camdenton, is the dream-come-true of Director Bill Mundhausen. The former corporate trainer from California says, “I felt there was a lack of science centers in rural America. So many kids I met had never been to one.”
So in 2000, Mundhausen built his own in a former machine shop in Central Missouri. He’s been fortunate to acquire cast-off interactive exhibits from the St. Louis Science Center, and he also creates his own displays that teach about space and astronomy, biology, physics, paleontology, Native Americans and much more. The collection includes a life-size cast of the head of Stan the T-Rex and the impressive personal archaeology collection of Australian explorer Clifford Wilson. Practically every square inch offers an opportunity to learn something – even the elevator has a display about elevator history.
There’s an activity area for hands-on learning where kids can make fossil reproductions and paper rockets to launch in the backyard. There, Mundhausen has created the DinoSpace Adventure Fun Park, “the planet of the dinosaur,” where kids hunt dinos with a water-balloon slingasaurus, escape dinosaurs on the Liftasaurus, ride the Pterodactyl Glide zip line, retrieve artifacts from a dig pit or stroll a nature trail.
The Center attracts school groups from all over the region, Mundhausen says. The board of the non-profit organization includes teachers and educators. He keeps the gift shop stocked with interesting science-related toys and books. “Everyone who comes here is very inspired,” Mundhausen says. “It’s not what you’d expect to see.” The Orion Center is open year-round; admission is $6.
In addition to intriguing museums, Central Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks offers other outstanding attractions and activities, as well as great lodging, dining, shopping and more. For complete information, contact the Lake of the Ozarks Convention and Visitor Bureau at 1-800-FUN-LAKE or visit the bureau’s website at www.funlake.com.
# # #
NOTE TO NEWS MEDIA: For your convenience, you may download an electronic
version of this article at www.funlake.com/press_releases/
