Branson & the White River Hills
Old Matt's Cabin and the Shepherd of the Hills, Marvel Cave under Silver Dollar City, Wilder's Rocky Ridge Farm, the Glade Top Trail and Roaring River.
The White River hills are cut country, bald knobs over deep hollows, with the White itself held in lakes behind dams: Table Rock above Branson, Taneycomo through town, Bull Shoals along the Arkansas line. MO-76 is the spine. It runs west from Branson past the music theaters to Shepherd of the Hills and Silver Dollar City, on the line William Lynch cleared to bring cars to his cave. East of US-65 the land opens into the national forest glades around Ava.
This was Osage (Wazhazhe) country, given up in the treaty signed at Fort Osage in 1808. After the Civil War, Taney County recorded some forty murders in twenty years without a conviction, and men led by Nat Kinney rode as the Bald Knobbers, vigilantes named for the grassy summits where they met. The night riding spread to neighboring counties and ended in killings and hangings.
What only this region has is a tourist trade started by a book. Harold Bell Wright's 1907 novel The Shepherd of the Hills sent readers looking for its people in Mutton Hollow, the Lynch family's cave tours grew into Silver Dollar City, and a family comedy show named for the Bald Knobbers began Branson's music-show business. On a ridge farm at Mansfield, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the Little House books.
What to See in Branson & the White River Hills
6 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Geology & Rock Formations
Natural Areas
Towns & Gateways
Stories from Branson & the White River Hills
The Galena Float
For half a century sportsmen floated the James and White rivers from Galena to Branson in flat-bottomed boats run by hill guides, until Table Rock Dam drowned the trip in 1958.
The Gulf and the Spring
Near Thayer a cave roof fell in and left a canyon, and the creek that drains into it comes up nine miles away as one of the great springs of the Ozarks, in Arkansas.
Branson & the White River Hills rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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