In 1905, a self-made, prominent Kansas City businessman, Robert McClure Snyder, began construction of his dream home atop a 250-foot cliff overlooking Big Spring, a natural spring in the south-central Missouri Ozarks, just outside of Camdenton. This region is known as Ha Ha Tonka, or Hahatonka, and is most often translated as the "Land of the Laughing Water" because of the sound the water makes at the base of the cliff.

Natural Resources of Ha Ha Tonka

Robert Snyder first saw Hahatonka in 1903 when he was on a fishing trip in the Ozarks. He had stopped at a hotel in Lebanon, Missouri, where the owner told him about an area he co-owned that had good fishing and beautiful scenery. Snyder took up the suggestion and made the 25-mile journey via horse and buggy to Hahatonka.

He saw the same scenery and natural resources the American Indians had seen for centuries: the abundance of wild game and water fowl, fish swimming in the clear streams, and suitable sites for camping in the villages or caves along the Niangua and Osage Rivers. He saw the topography known as Karst which includes underground streams, springs, cliffs, sinkholes, caves, chasms, and natural rock formations that had been forming since prehistoric times; and he wanted to preserve all of it.

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