Shepherd of the Hills Homestead (Old Matt's Cabin)

Harold Bell Wright came into these hills in 1896, a young minister looking for his health, and often camped by the homestead of John and Anna Ross above Mutton Hollow. They became Old Matt and Aunt Mollie in The Shepherd of the Hills, the novel he published in 1907, the year he left his pulpit at Lebanon, Missouri, for California. Readers came looking for them. So many came that the Rosses moved away to Garber, and Old Matt's Cabin, on the National Register and still on its original site, became the start of Branson tourism.

After the Rosses died, Elizabeth McDaniel, a Springfield banker's daughter remembered as Miss Lizzie, bought the homestead, lived in the cabin for a time, had her own house moved down from Springfield in the 1920s and hosted the first reenactments of the book on the cabin lawn. Bruce and Mary Trimble opened Old Matt's Barn as a gift shop in 1946 and built a wooden tower on Inspiration Point in 1949, and their son Mark opened the Old Mill Theatre on August 6, 1960. The outdoor drama has played since the 1960s.

The novel's villains are generic Bald Knobbers, borrowed from the Taney County vigilantes of the 1880s, whose leader, Nat Kinney, was shot dead in August 1888. The 160-acre property is now an adventure park with a tower, zipline and mountain coaster, and the history comes on a tram tour with stops at the cabin, Inspiration Point, the moved Morgan Community Church and the theater set.