When the Osage River was first dammed to create the reservoir that would come to be known as the Lake of the Ozarks in the 1930’s, the new lake was often envisioned as a veritable sportsman’s paradise. It was to be a place of superb natural beauty and no place around the Lake embodies that quite like Ha Ha Tonka State Park.
Ha Ha Tonka, located about five miles south of Camdenton on the Niangua arm of the Lake of the Ozarks, is one of the most popular State Parks in Missouri, coming in at the 10th most visited of the 93 Missouri State Parks in 2024 with 533,745 people visiting in that year alone.
According to the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), Ha Ha Tonka has some of the best examples of Karst topography in the state, including a 70-foot long natural bridge and the “Coliseum”, a large theatre-like sinkhole created by the collapse of a cavern that measures 500 feet long and 300 feet wide. In fact, the 250-foot bluffs that sit on either side of where Ha Ha Tonka Spring empties into the Lake of the Ozarks is what remains of an ancient collapsed cavern.
Much of the striking Karst topography in Ha Ha Tonka is accessible to the public by way of trails, boardwalks, and stairs that ascend and descend the bluffs from the visitors’ center at the top, all the way down to the spring at the very foot of the rock formations.
The park is also home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, including one of the best examples of oak woodlands in the Missouri Ozarks with the nearly 3,000 acres preserved in the Ha Ha Tonka Oak Woodland Natural Area. It also boasts terrific wildflower variety in the open rocky glades that support an ecosystem similar to that found in the southwestern United States. The glades are also home to a number of lizards and skinks, and other animals like the striped bark scorpion and the Missouri tarantula.
The natural beauty of the park is allowed to flourish thanks to meticulous management through prescribed burns that emulate the wildfires that once swept through Ozark forests and kept the forest floor clear. These burns allow for soil regeneration and eliminating brush that would otherwise crowd out the native woodland plants.
Despite the natural allure of Ha Ha Tonka, the park also provides plenty of human history to go along with the natural.
The site of Ha Ha Tonka has always been attractive to Native American populations and early explorers thanks to the spring water, abundant wildlife, and plentiful woodland. The first permanent mill was established in 1830 by a man named Garland, and the remnants of an early mill can still be seen on the trail along the spring’s stream.
However, the primary manmade attraction at Ha Ha Tonka State Park would not come to be until the early twentieth century – the castle.
Today, what stands as a complex of ruined walls and arches was once the dream of a Kansas City business man named Robert M. Snyder who envisioned a grand, European-style castle perched atop the bluffs overlooking the spring below. However, after Snyder died in 1906 in an early automobile accident, the scope of the castle was scaled back but his sons were able to finish the somewhat less elaborate castle in 1922.
After the property was leased for use as a hotel, in 1942 the roof caught fire from chimney sparks and the whole castle was gutted by the fire. The nearby carriage house suffered a similar fate, and in 1976 the water tower was burned by vandals, leaving only ruins of all three structures.
The area was officially preserved with the creation of Ha Ha Tonka State Park in 1978 and ever since the park has fascinated visitors with both its natural and human wonders, making it a truly unique area and experience at the Lake of the Ozarks.
