Like massive meandering threads, Ozarks rivers help stitch the region’s cultural fabric together. We need them for life, but we enjoy them for fun. Cue the Ozarks float trip, a tradition that links generations of us — here and others who have come to visit.
"One of the most unusual types of fishing in the world originated here," notes a film produced by today's Missouri Department of Conservation in the late 1950s. "The Missouri float trips, with their rare combinations of unexcelled scenery, sparkling streams and ever-changing fishing waters, draw anglers each year from the 48 states and foreign countries as well."
It was decades after visitors began coming to the Ozarks specifically to float. Tom Koob, an author of the book “On the River,” dates that development to the late 1800s and said it was brought by the railroad.
"When they got down here, these railroad men and business people and some, you know, wealthy vacationers, they really liked this area," Koob said. "It was pretty, you know, good hunting, good fishing. What they needed was somebody that could put them on the fish or on the game, and the locals knew how to do that."
Nature-minded men of means might spend weeks on the river. They often traveled in johnboats navigated by river guides who made the roughing-it experience more comfortable. Todd Wilkinson, assistant superintendent of Montauk State Park, home of the headwaters of the Current River, shared more.
"The main focus was the Jon boat," Wilkinson said. "There are different styles of Jon boats — the Current River Jon boats are a little different than the James or the White River Jon boat, but it's basically that large flat-bottomed boat that's designed to handle Ozarks streams and rivers."
Those guides were a huge part of this early tradition, helping lead the trip but also cook the food and entertain the guests.
"Unlike today, where everybody's paddling, the guests really aren't supposed to be working," Wilkinson said. "They're there to be fishing or to be floating. The guide himself is going to be the one propelling the craft downstream."
A few examples of these guides include the Bales family, owner of Bales Boating Company, who built a river-guiding legacy near Round Spring in Shannon County.
Many folks across the Ozarks are also familiar with Larry Dablemont, who has long written a newspaper column about the outdoor Ozarks. He and his family guided on the Piney.
And no story about Ozarks floating would be complete without Jim Owen. The ”King of the Ozarks Float Trip Operators,” as a newspaper article put it, was born in Elkland, Missouri, in 1903. Owen left the Ozarks after high school but moved to Branson in the 1930s. He came to help his father start a drug store but quickly became known for his personality by way of the Jim Owen Boat Line.
"Tom Yocum is probably the most famous of the Owen guides," Wilkinson said. "Camp Yocum down by Galena was one of his operations when he broke away from Jim Owen for a while. But Tom Yocum, Charlie Barnes, that group of people, they were known for being raconteurs. They could tell stories. They could talk about what the people were seeing because so many of these people coming from off, coming from St. Louis or Kansas City or Chicago, they wanted to see an Ozarks they had read about and may or may not have existed, but Owen created it for them."
Owen was known for more than the river. He was in real estate, banking and served as Branson’s mayor. His Owen Theater, opened as the Hillbilly Theater in 1936 to entertain floaters and tourists, is now home to the Branson Regional Arts Council. One of Silver Dollar City’s first rides was even named in his honor, too.
"He really promoted — he knew how to do that," Koob said. "Brought a lot of people in; a lot of big-name celebrities and things like that. Really promoted Branson, and he made it a big deal."
Just a few years after Life magazine featured one of Owen’s float trips on its cover, the river promoter saw the pending end of float trips as he knew them. That demise was brought by a new tourist attraction: Lakes, which were endorsed for flood control and recreation.
"The Depression comes along, and then the war comes along, but right after the second world war, they got real busy," Koob said. "And the Corps of Engineers was tasked with controlling flooding. So how do you control flooding? You dam the rivers."
Of course, floating has remained a popular Ozarks pastime. Examples include Ozark National Scenic Riverways in the eastern Missouri Ozarks. It was established in 1964 as the country’s first federally protected system. Four years later, the Eleven Point was designed as a wild and scenic river. There’s the Elk River, such a tourist attraction in the 1960s that McDonald County succeeded from Missouri when several nearby communities were left off a map. (True story, but for another day.) And down in Arkansas, the Buffalo National River joined the protected lineup in 1972.
The bottom line: People love the rivers. Economic impact shows that every year. But while they fall under the “best things in life are free” category, their future isn’t, nor is it a given.
"I think, if anything, most people probably take rivers for granted," Wilkinson said. "We've gotten spoiled in the fact that we have all of these great natural resources literally within a couple of hours driving time, and we just always assume that they're going to be there. And at the same time, we think the threat is usually a large threat. It's the dam, it's the CAFO, it's the development. But in reality, the biggest problem a lot of our rivers face is runoff.
"So we all play a role. It's all our job to protect it. And again, if we want our kids to have that same experience," he said, "we can't just assume it's going to be here when they're, when they're ready to do it."
Notable MO-ments is made possible by a grant from the Missouri Humanities Council.
