General Information
Ha Ha Tonka State Park is a public recreation area encompassing over 3,700 acres (1,500 ha) on the Niangua arm of the Lake of the Ozarks, about five miles south of Camdenton, Missouri. The state park's most notable feature is the ruins of Ha Ha Tonka, an early 20th-century stone mansion that was modeled after European castles of the 16th century.
The park also features caves, sinkholes, and bluffs overlooking the lake. It is a prominent example of karst topography, which is geological formation shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock. A 70-acre (28 ha) portion of the park was designated as the Ha Ha Tonka Karst Natural Area in 1981.
Construction of the Ha Ha Tonka castle was started in 1905 by Robert McClure Snyder, Sr., a Kansas City businessman who purchased the large property after first visiting there in 1903.
Following Snyder's death in an auto accident in 1906, the castle was completed by his sons Robert, Jr., LeRoy, and Kenneth Snyder in the early 1920s before the Stock Market Crash. The building was used as a summer and weekend home by the Snyder family, who lived in Kansas City. In the late 1930s, it was used as a hotel; however, it was destroyed by fire in 1942.
The state purchased the castle and grounds in 1978, adapting them for use as a state park and opening them to the public.
The park has 15 miles of hiking trails leading to caves, sinkholes, natural bridges, and the castle. The park also features boating, fishing, and swimming.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ha Ha Tonka State Park", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
