Ha Ha Tonka: The Castle That Burned
Near Lake Of The Ozarks, Missouri
On a bluff above a spring fed cove stand the roofless stone walls of a European style castle, and their story is one of ambition undone twice over. In nineteen oh five, a wealthy Kansas City businessman named Robert McClure Snyder began building a grand stone mansion here, on a wild and beautiful tract he had fallen in love with two years earlier. He imagined a private retreat of turrets and towers overlooking the water.
But Snyder never saw it finished. In nineteen oh six, he was killed in an automobile accident. His sons carried the work forward, and the castle was finally completed in the early nineteen twenties.
The family enjoyed it for barely two decades. Then in nineteen forty two, a fire gutted the great house down to its stone shell. The old water tower was damaged by fire as well.
The state of Missouri bought the ruins and the surrounding land in nineteen seventy eight and made them the heart of Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Today you can walk right up to the blackened walls, gaze out through empty window frames at the lake, and feel the strange romance of a dream that fire refused to let stand.
