1958 Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks
DESCRIPTION
A spectacular midcentury bird's eye view of the Lake of the Ozarks, created to sell the newly booming resort region as one of the Midwest's great vacation playgrounds.
The enormous lake spreads across the foreground while roads lead outward toward Kansas City and St. Louis. Resorts, towns, highways, golf courses, marinas, and other attractions are identified throughout, while a photographic panorama across the top promotes boating, fishing, swimming, horseback riding, Bagnell Dam, the Missouri State Capitol, and other pleasures of an Ozarks vacation. The map was published by the Lake of the Ozarks Association, the organization responsible for promoting tourism and commerce around the rapidly developing lake.
The reverse transforms the piece into an extraordinary directory of the lake's postwar tourist economy. A schematic map is surrounded by advertisements for scores of resorts, fishing camps, restaurants, marinas, cottages, nightclubs, real estate agencies, and other businesses. Union Electric promotes Bagnell Dam, while the Missouri Pacific advertises bargain fares to the lake. This combination of sweeping pictorial cartography and dense commercial advertising provides a remarkably detailed snapshot of the Lake of the Ozarks as it developed from a hydroelectric reservoir completed in 1931 into a major Midwestern recreation destination.
Dating the Map
Although undated, this issue can be placed around 1950 through comparison with other editions published by the Lake of the Ozarks Association and the businesses and transportation services advertised on the reverse. The State Historical Society of Missouri dates a closely related version to the late 1940s, while revised editions are known from the 1950s. The combination of resorts, businesses, road network, and promotional material appearing on this example points to a date of c. 1950.
CONDITION
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