Party Cove: The Floating Bacchanal
Near Lake Of The Ozarks, Missouri
The Lake of the Ozarks has a wholesome side of family cabins and fishing docks, and it has a rowdy side, and the rowdy side has an address. It is a cove officially called Anderson Hollow, but everyone knows it as Party Cove. The New York Times once described it as the oldest established permanent floating bacchanal in the country, and that reputation is well earned.
The tradition of a floating party wandered from cove to cove starting in the nineteen sixties, pushed along whenever private landowners grew tired of the crowds. By nineteen ninety six it had settled into Anderson Hollow, a cove about a mile long and two hundred yards wide, inside Lake of the Ozarks State Park along the Grand Glaize arm. On a big summer weekend, as many as three thousand boats and eight thousand people raft up together, lashing their hulls into floating streets of music and mayhem.
Newcomers running the gauntlet are met with water cannons and loud demands. The scene has a genuine Sin City on the water reputation, and it is very much adult oriented. It has also had real consequences.
In two thousand seven, after drownings and a broken neck involving personnel from nearby Fort Leonard Wood, an Army general declared Party Cove off limits to his soldiers. Fun, chaos, and caution all raft up together here.
