Ha Ha Tonka State Park

Ha Ha Tonka is a lesson in what water does to limestone and dolomite. Caverns dissolved underground, then their roofs fell in. What is left is a natural bridge 70 feet wide that spans 60 feet and stands more than 100 feet high, a sinkhole called the Colosseum, 500 feet long and 300 wide, and a gorge with 250-foot bluffs where Ha Ha Tonka Spring, the 12th largest in Missouri, puts out more than 48 million gallons a day toward the lake. Between two water-filled channels stands a steep island with a balanced rock and a cave. Wooden stairs circle the chasm from the spring up to the castle.

The castle was Robert M. Snyder's. The Kansas City businessman, who had made his money in wholesale groceries, real estate, banking and utilities, began buying land here after a visit in 1903 and started building in 1905, with sandstone quarried nearby and hauled by mule wagon and a small railroad. He was killed in 1906 in one of Missouri's first automobile accidents, and his sons finished the house in 1922. They fought the building of Bagnell Dam and lost, and the new lake swallowed the small spring-fed lake the castle had overlooked. Leased as a hotel, the house burned in 1942 when chimney sparks caught the roof. The state made the park in 1978.

Away from the ruins, almost 3,000 acres of oak woodland, some trees more than 300 years old, are kept open with prescribed fire.