The White House Hotel

In the early 1930's, as the dammed Osage River slowly crept through the countryside to fulfill its destiny as the Lake of the Ozarks, people came from afar with a vision. They would stay and help create a special place.

Lake Ozark, Missouri, the town that emerges at the southwest end of Bagnell Dam, is inhabited by a variety of young hard-working folks building relationships and businesses, families and community as they collectively face the future. From Tulsa comes the son of a cop, Harold Pilkington, and Marion Clayton, the son of a mine foreman, comes from Illinois. They join the Frys from Springfield and the young Robinson sisters from Bagnell and begin to forge a life. With others among them Jay Rice, Harold's Cherokee friend from Oklahoma, craftsman Lon Stanton, restauranteurs the Gordons, and engineer Bruce James their collective world revolves around an iconic building at the center of town. It is populated by the cook Maggie Custer and waitresses Pauline and Janie, and new "family" from Fort Wood-the corporal from Mississippi and the sergeant from Chicago. And you will never forget the Claytons' precocious little daughter, Ruthie, who will warm your heart. They call the place the "Whitehouse," and all who visit emerge forever changed.

All of this serves as a preface to the post-war tourism explosion at the Midwest phenomenon called Lake of the Ozarks.