Some say it reminds them of a dragon because of the way it sprawls over most of a half-dozen Missouri counties. Seventeen percent of the surface of Camden County is covered, along with parts of St. Clair, Henry, Benton, Morgan, and Miller counties. In 1931 the legislature almost passed a resolution calling it Lake Benton, but it remained the Lake of the Ozarks, one of the nation’s largest man-made lakes and one of our country’s major recreational areas. It was formed when Bagnall Dam was erected on the Osage River, the last private-enterprise dam of its kind built in the United States.

AOWM – October 19