Boatloads Of Memories

Photo courtesy of Todd Franklin

From the heyday of excursion boats on Lake of the Ozarks, these four may be the most beloved and nostalgic.

by Nathan Bechtold; Tom Sawyer reporting by Vicki Wood; Governor McClurg story from Damming The Osage, Lens & Pen Press.  Available at www.beautifulozarks.com for $35, postage paid.

In the early decades of Lake of the Ozarks, tourism looked very different than it does in 2024. Most visitors didn’t have a boat, nor did they have access to one: they experienced the Lake aboard an excursion boat. These beloved boats became a central part of untold thousands of visitors’ memories of special trips to Lake of the Ozarks.

The Governor McClurg

Before the lake filled, Highway 5 crossed the Osage River at the toll suspension bridge near Linn Creek. While two modern bridges were being built to connect Versailles with Camdenton, the custom built Gov. McClurg ferried cars across the river. It carried twenty cars at a time the mile and a quarter from Lover’s Leap to Green Bay Terraces, an early Lake development. Backed up traffic was common on weekends.

Photo courtesy of Lisa Dodson

When the new bridges were finished and Highway 5 relocated, the Governor McClurg ferry was refurbished as an excursion boat.  Through the late 1930s and into the 1960s, the Gov. McClurg showboat offered day or night lake cruises from its dock at the west end of the Glaize bridge.

When the Lodge of the Four Seasons acquired the Gov. McClurg excursion boat, it was renamed the Seasons Queen.

The boat was named for Joseph W. McClurg, respected citizen of old Linn Creek. He was a well educated, dapper gentleman, who, before the Civil War, was co-owner of the Linn Creek Big Store which did a half million dollars a year business. After the Civil War McClurg was elected to Congress three times and governor of Missouri once (1868). “The soft spoken, religious, teetotalling McClurg could be considered the most distinguished figure in early Osage valley history. Certainly, he was the only personage in the region photographed by Mathew Brady.” (page 54, Damming the Osage)

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The Governor McClurg no longer sails the waters of Lake of the Ozarks. Rumor has it, the boat was made into a work-boat for awhile, and is now beached somewhere on the Gravois Arm.