The building of the dam in a lot of ways really brought the area, I think, forward and modernized it quite a bit.

[bluegrass music] One of the unquestionable strengths and appeal of the Ozarks is our beautiful lakes and waterways, some of the most impressive and popular anywhere.

They collectively contribute much to the recreational pleasure, economic development, and habitat of our region.

Many of these lakes are often manmade and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

One of these popular bodies of water is Table Rock Lake, near Branson, Missouri.

On today's program, outdoor enthusiasts and author Tom Koob tells us about the history and construction of Table Rock Lake and what lies beneath it.

ANNOUNCER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

Well, thanks for being with me today, and we're going to talk about I guess some of my favorite subjects ever.

I really love the environment in the Ozarks, and the lakes are obviously a special part of that whole environment, for better or for worse in some cases.

I guess there's environmental issues, but there's also other things going on with that.

Tell me a little bit about yourself before we get started, and then we'll work our way through the White River system.

All right.

I wasn't born in the Ozarks, but I've lived here for 30 years.

So I like to think that I have the heart of an Ozarker.

One thing that's always interested me is, of course, the natural beauty and environment of the area.

But I also like fishing and-- probably one of the main reasons that brought me here.

And I live on Table Rock Lake, spend a lot of time on the water, enjoy fishing.

But occasionally, particularly when the lake level was a little low, occasionally you'll see something along the shore that looks like maybe it was part of an old foundation or something.

And it got me interested in, what was here before the lake?

And what got covered by the lake?

So it kind of piqued my interest, and I started studying it.

And it's really, to me, quite interesting is, what's down there below all that water?

Yeah, and you actually have been writing books about it and really taking it very seriously.

Yes, it's interesting.

Doing the research is interesting.

I like to write.

I'm not professionally trained, but I enjoy writing.

So I started doing the research and writing some of these things down.

And people seem to enjoy reading about it.

Whether they've lived here all their lives or whether they're just visiting on vacation, they seem to be interested in the lake itself, of course.

But also, what was here before?

And what may be still down there?

Yeah, and we'll talk about Table Rock very specifically in a couple of minutes, but we were talking, before we started the show, about the White River system and the dams that are along the-- could you just go through each of the dams and kind of how they came into being.

And-- Yeah, the White River is a major river in the Ozarks, bisecting it basically from-- from west to east before it eventually enters the Mississippi.

But all of the White River in Missouri is impounded.

So the White River starts, of course, as a small stream in the Boston Mountains and begins to flow north.

That portion of it is dammed by Beaver Dam in the early '60s, and then the-- the next portion is Table Rock.

And Beaver Dam is in Arkansas.

And so-- Yes.

--the river keeps flowing north from there.

Yeah.

It does, yes.

Sort of northern-- Beaver Lake is all-- all in Arkansas.

But shortly below Beaver Dam really begins Table Rock Lake, the very upper end of it, then flowing, of course, into Missouri.

And kind of the river takes a-- a eastward turn there and forms Table Rock behind Table Rock Dam, which was completed in 1959.

Then the next section is Taneycomo-- little Taneycomo, a little bit of a bottleneck among all these large reservoirs.

JIM BAKER: Yeah, I always thought that was-- the first time I saw it, I thought it was a river, and I didn't know that it was-- but it's a reservoir.

TOM KOOB: It looks sometimes like a river.

Some people call it river lake.

It's only about 22-miles long-- much older than the other lakes.

It was completed in 1913 by a power company, and it was built to generate power-- probably in a lot of ways is-- is part of the initiation of-- of big tourism in the-- the Ozarks region.

A lot of people wanted to come down and spend time on Table Rock-- or I'm sorry-- Taneycomo.

And then below Taneycomo or Powersite Dam starts Bull Shoals.

Bull Shoals is a large reservoir, flows through parts of Missouri and then quite a bit of it into Arkansas.

So all that portion of the White River in Missouri and parts of Arkansas is impounded and now are the large lakes that people enjoy.

And then from Bull Shoals, the river goes back and ends up in the Mississippi River eventually.

Eventually, it does, yeah.

That's quite a-- that's quite a large river system.

It's pretty amazing when you think about that many impoundments along the way.

TOM KOOB: It is-- and a lot of tributaries, the Buffalo River coming in, the-- the Current, the Eleven Point, the Black.

There's so many rivers coming out of Missouri and coming up from Arkansas that meet with the White.

It's a big river system.

So is-- are all those da-- in each case, for each impoundment, are they controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers, all of them?

Or is there some different ownerships?

Or is it pretty much all Corps of Engineer?

Pretty much all Corps of Engineers, with the exception of Taneycomo, which is basically a-- a private dam.

The Corps may have some influence over the usage of the lake, but I'm not really sure on that.

But, originally, it was not a Corps lake.

It was a private endeavor.

But Table Rock certainly is a Corps lake.

And-- let's talk a little bit about-- before we get into what happened after the lake was there, I think most people really are interested in what used to be-- I know I-- I spent some time in China at the Three Gorges Dams.

TOM KOOB: Oh, yeah.

And it was fascinating with all the-- I mean, hundreds of thousands of people had to be relocated.

Yeah.

And, you know, then you've got stuff like cemeteries that have to be moved, and railroads, and roads, and small towns.

Give kind of a sense of what-- what that area was like before Table Rock Lake.

The area was quite a bit different.

The-- I wouldn't call it sparsely populated, but it wasn't heavily populated, particularly along the White River Hills.

That was a-- that's a fairly rugged area, relatively mountainous, deep valleys, heavily forested.

So it was kind of a rough area.

Now, of course, outlying from that you have towns like Springfield and Harrison.

But right along the river, mostly small farms, some small towns.

The land in the Ozarks, to a large extent, at least the interior Ozarks, is not particularly good farmland, but what good farmland there was-- the arable land was often in the bottomland.

That was more fertile soil.

So a lot of people had their small farms, growing corn and other crops, in the bottomland right along the river.

A few small towns-- not too many-- right along the river mainly because the river flooded frequently, and it was probably foolish to build a town right next to the river because it can come up pretty quick and pretty high.

So a lot-- a lot of small farms and homesteads.

The roads and bridges were somewhat limited.

There was quite a bit of bridge building and road building in the 1920s.

But still, a-- the roads were not great in the Ozarks prior-- particularly prior to World War II.

So there was some roads, but a lot of them were not particularly good.

There obviously were cemeteries.

And so there was-- there were people living down there.

And if they were going to build the lake, that was going to be lost.

Yeah, I'm trying to think back at a time like that when-- when someone comes and says, oh, by the way, we're going to create a dam, and there's going to be a flood.

And you're no longer going to be here.

That had to be kind of an emotional time for people that had settled in that area, I guess, for a long time.

Yeah, the primary reason that the-- Table Rock and the other dams on the White River were built was for flood control.

That was the primary reason.

The secondary reason was to generate electricity-- hydroelectric.

And the third reason was for recreation, although that was really not the initial reason.

JIM BAKER: Kind of an unintended consequence I guess of everything.

Yeah, it became a good reason.

JIM BAKER: A happy kind of-- yeah.

But they do still play an important role in flood control, and-- and generating electricity, and recreation.

So all three.

But the people that lived along the river that had farms there, their homes, they're growing crops, raising cattle, their land was seized by eminent domain.

And they had to move.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you if the government used eminent domain on it.

They would have to to have that many-- TOM KOOB: Oh, yeah.

Because that had to be a lot of tracts of land.

I mean, my God, it has to be-- TOM KOOB: Thousands of acres.

--thousands of acres.

There's 43,000 acres, as I was reading in one of the things.

But-- so there had to be a lot of land ownership, a lot of different small parcels, a lot of big parcels.

And-- TOM KOOB: Absolutely.

So-- how did-- did the court-- who reached the decision to say, OK, this looks like a good area for-- and there's flooding, and we need to do something about it.

Was Beaver Dam built first?

TOM KOOB: No.

OK. TOM KOOB: No, Bull Shoals was built first in the late '40s.

Table Rock was built in the '50s, and Beaver was completed in the early '60s.

JIM BAKER: Oh, so it worked, just the opposite direction.

There was-- people had been talking about building dams on the White River and other local rivers for over 100 years.

And-- and Taneycomo was an obvious choice.

But from a government standpoint, there had been a lot of interest, primarily control flooding, because there could be awful flooding along the White River and some of the tributaries.

The-- Congress passed the Flood Control Act in the 1940s, and eventually that act is what authorized the building of-- of these big-- big dams on the White River, all by the Corps of Engineers.

A lot of the work was contracted out to-- to contractors, of course.

But, yeah, the-- eminent domain had to be used to seize the land.

And it created, you know, a stir among the people.

Didn't want to lose their farms or their homes.

Some people probably received good payment, some maybe not so much.

It just depended on where the land was and-- and how that whole system worked.

I would think the most touchy situation would be the cemeteries.

That's-- it just seems to me that would be kind of a-- how-- how did they go about-- I guess they relocated the cemeteries, and they had-- but they had to identify bodies, and they had to do a lot of-- lot of work on that, I would imagine.

Yeah, certainly a sensitive subject, but it had to be done.

There were over a thousand graves moved out of the Table Rock project, and relocated about 50 cemeteries that were-- would be in the floodplain.

Most of that work was contracted out to, like, undertakers or funeral homes.

The-- and a lot of these were small cemeteries.

Some were not, but some were just small family cemeteries.

They had to be located-- the-- the graves were-- were disinterred.

They had to dig it up, collect everything that was found, take any markers, or stones, or monuments, or fences, or anything like that.

And then these were moved to either existing or cemeteries that were outside the flood zone.

It was a sensitive subject, but it did have to be done.

And it was completed.

So from the-- from the time that the decision was made to start-- and we'll-- we'll focus on Table Rock instead of all the others.

But-- Sure.

So from the time that the decision was made to-- to construct the dam, how long did that actually take to design, plan design, construct, and do?

It sounds like it's obviously a major monumental project.

It's a big project.

Some of the early work done was the surveying, and that was done in the late '40s.

And there are still maps available that show the entire area that would become Table Rock was-- was accurately surveyed-- or at least based on what they had at the time.

They also had to determine a location for the dam.

Some of the early work had located the dam a little bit farther east of where it is now.

But they did the-- the geological survey and determined that that was not the best location.

So they moved it upstream on the right about-- I believe about a mile.

So it-- it involved-- the dam is probably the primary construction work, and that is a big project.

That work probably started about 1951, 1952.

They were doing some clearing in the lakebed, so they removed a lot of trees.

And they had to start the eminent domain process.

They still left a lot of trees down there, but in certain areas they did remove a lot.

The dam started in, I think, around 1954 and was completed in 1958, dedicated in 1959-- big project.

It employed a lot of people.

Of course, it's primarily concrete.

There's some interesting stories about-- about the dam building.

To me, one of the interesting stories is that before the dam was completed, quite a bit of it was-- had been constructed, but there was still a large V-shaped notch in the center of the dam.

That was the last portion that would be completed.

And it-- the lake filled up prematurely.

This happened two times-- 1957 and 1958.

And there are photographs of the lake filling up and flowing over the dam, through that V slot in the dam, which was a dangerous situation.

But it just goes to show you how quick these valleys can fill up with water when it rains.

Oh, yeah, the flash floods and everything are really a pretty-- pretty amazing kind of a-- kind of a deal.

So I-- I was always fascinated.

The shoreline, you know-- I just saw this, and I think it was I want to say 700 and some miles of shoreline.

Yeah.

And did they-- does this-- does the water-- as the water fills up, there was a main part of the-- the lake, I guess.

But then it goes off into all these different valleys, right?

I mean, that's how it was formed or-- because there was not-- was there a lot of excavation work done or anything done in those ar-- did it just-- did it just backfill into these different areas?

It did.

And-- and, you know, they could plan that out.

The-- the plan was that the lake would fill up to a normal pool level of 915 feet above sea level.

So they can survey that, and they know where that will be along all these coves, and arms, and everything.

The Corps controls up to about 932 feet, I think.

Nothing can be-- be built or developed in that area.

That's-- that's because the water comes up there.

And it does come up there because we know over the last few years it's come up quite high to that level.

Yeah, there's a lot of shoreline, all these interesting coves.

As far as clearing, they-- clearing trees primarily, that was mostly done in low water areas, around where marinas would be located, maybe where bridges and access areas were, that type of thing.

But there were still a lot of trees left.

And the trunks, at least to some of those trees, are still down there.

Yeah, I used to-- when I grew up in-- in Kentucky and Tennessee, the TVA lakes, I used to kind of try to figure out, OK, how do these coves-- I mean, they're all over the place, and you never know exactly where-- I guess the water goes where the water wants to go in some cases.

The water's going to fill up to that level, wherever you set it, depending on the-- the location, and-- and height of the dam, and how much water's coming in, and how much water's going out.

So now, when-- when Table Rock-- as they were building it, did they actually do the turbines for electricity and stuff at the same time they were doing that?

Or how did-- how did that-- because they started out for flood control, but it ended up much more than that.

It was planned for hydroelectric, too, and that was part of the project.

It was later in the project.

The dam was the first thing to begin.

But at the same time, I'm sure they had planned to-- to-- to build the hydroelectric capability, and it was built next to and just below the dam and still operates today.

Right.

Is that operated by the Corps of Engineers?

Or is it-- who operates the-- Jim, I don't know.

I would assume it is, but I'm not-- that may be contracted.

I don't know for sure.

Yeah, a lot of contracts that they put out on these things.

Why don't we talk a little bit about just some of the-- your-- your more personal human observations?

Because, I mean, this is a massive project, a lot of people affected.

But as you were doing your research, what are maybe three or four of the things that really stick out in your mind about Table Rock Lake?

One area that interests me quite a bit was the archaeological work done.

When they realized that this huge area along the river would be permanently forever inundated, Archaeological Society realized there's a lot of particularly Native American artifact sites there.

And we need to find out what they are.

So they-- they had to do it quickly, so they spent time-- University of Missouri, and University of Arkansas, and the Missouri Archaeological Society spent a lot of time in the area, going up and down the river, trying to locate sites that had archaeological evidence.

And they located a lot.

And they excavated quite a few, and they found some really interesting things.

They-- they found grave sites.

They found a lot of materials.

So a lot of evidence of peoples that lived here thousands of years ago.

And that interests me because now it's gone.

I mean, it's-- I'm glad they did the work and were able to find out what they did.

And, of course, I'm sure they kept some of these-- these-- these relics and things.

But we'll never be able to go and find out what was there again now because it's too deep underwater.

I also enjoyed interviewing people who lived here before the lake and spent some time with them to tell-- so they could tell me their stories about what it was like to lose their farm, lose their home, had to move.

Most of the people that had to be relocated were not happy about it, and that's pretty understandable.

They were losing their-- their home.

In some cases, these farms had been in families for-- for decades.

But I think a lot of them also realized that it was going to happen anyhow and that, particularly from an economic standpoint, it would probably be good for the area.

And it was.

It did improve the economy of the area, and it changed so much.

The roads were so much better.

The bridges were better.

Communications was better.

It really did change the area.

If you look at the area around Table Rock, let's say in the 1940s, and then compare that to what you see in the 1960s, there's a pretty stark difference.

A lot of the people previously may or may not have had running water, may or may not have had electricity.

It was a pretty rugged lifestyle-- was enjoyable.

They loved it, but it was pretty tough.

But the-- the building of the dam in a lot of ways really brought the area I think forward and modernized it quite a bit.

Yeah, I think the other model that I'm aware of and familiar with is the Tennessee Valley Authority.

It's the same thing.

By-- by-- by putting in the lakes and everything, they-- and the dams, and the electric-- they brought electricity to the area.

It was missing before that.

And they improved the roads.

And so there was an economic development aspect to it, but it certainly changed the-- the nature of the-- of the place and-- and the people that lived there.

And so now, just fast forwarding a little bit-- I know you need to go fishing probably sometime.

You go to Taneycomo or Table-- Table Rock?

Both.

If you like trout, I imagine you go to Taneycomo.

But the tourism that's taking place now is really-- the lakes are drawing all that.

So how do you see that going in the future, as far as just the-- is there environmental concerns about the lakes given the fact we've got a lot of people using them?

Silting-- lakes tend to fill up.

I mean, is there issues that you stay awake at night thinking about, saying, oh my gosh, this is not good?

I don't know if it keeps me awake at night, but of course I think about that.

I mean, the area-- this area particularly of the Ozarks has been a tourist area for well over a century.

I mean, early on, there was float fishing.

That was a big deal down here-- fishing and hunting in the area.

When Harold Bell Wright wrote his novel "Shepherd of the Hills," that attracted a lot of tourism to the area.

So tourism has always been big in the Ozarks, and it still is.

And it draws a lot of people and a lot of dollars.

It certainly has its positive impacts from an economic standpoint.

But a lot of people can create issues, too.

I think we've done a good job of protecting the-- the quality of the lakes, the quality of the forest.

I mean, we have the-- the national forest.

But it-- it is under stress to some degree just because of the number of people, and it's probably not going to get any less.

People love to go to the lake, and they're going to keep coming.

So I guess we just have to do the best we can to try to-- to manage that and-- and keep it as-- as beautiful as it is.

Yeah, and it's-- it's-- it's really definitely an asset for the-- for the region no matter how you view it, I guess.

And it's something we all need to protect and take care of.

And-- and really it's a blessing, and we should enjoy it.

Because I-- I just get in my car and drive down to Table Rock.

And I think, wow, this is pretty good.

I'm only 20 miles from here.

So it's just kind of-- kind of a nice deal.

So-- well, I really appreciate your taking time to talk to us about the lake, and I hope we have a chance-- we'll put your book on the screen and everything, so people can see that.

TOM KOOB: Thank you, Jim.

JIM BAKER: But I think it's an interesting read, and I think-- hopefully, everyone will get a chance to learn more about Table Rock Lake.

Yes, I do too.

It's-- it's a wonderful, beautiful place.

A lot of people really enjoy it, and I think we can continue to do that.

So when you're out there on the water, maybe think about, what was down there?

What's still down there now?

Indeed.

We'll be right back.

ANNOUNCER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

I hope you enjoyed our program about the development of Table Rock Lake.

I want to thank my guest, Tom Koob, for sharing the story of Table Rock Lake with us and invite you to join us next time for "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

[bluegrass music]