You can probably think back and remember your favorite stuffed toy. Was a little pink stuffed cat that had a little bow and a purse? Was it a cuddly blue dog with its tongue waggling? Today we are living in a society that is inundated with stuffed toys like beanie boos and even stores that are specifically created for the purpose of kids making their own stuffed animals. It might be easy, therefore, to think that these toys have been around forever. Where did this practice start? Where did it all begin?

The Mystery of Amelia Earhart has captured the imagination of young and old, amateur and professional, since she disappeared on July 2, 1937 on her flight over the Pacific which would complete her around-the-world flight – the longest (following the equatorial route) and the first by a woman.

From the time of her first ride in an airplane as a child, Amelia Earhart was hooked on flying. Her passion led her to break flight records and become a public celebrity. In one of her letters, she hoped that the around the world flight would finally rid her of her compulsion to fly and she could settle down. Though she did not survive it, it was indeed her last flight. She vanished into the Pacific Ocean 24 hours after leaving Lae, New Guinea.

Crossing the 2,500 mile Pacific was the most dangerous part of her flight. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca was standing off Howland Island for several days to act as a radio contact for her. Radio communications in the area were very poor and the Itasca was overwhelmed with commercial radio traffic as a result of the celebrated flight.

She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, left with 1100 gallons of fuel, good for around 24 hours of flight (the flight should have been about 19 hours), but she ran out of fuel 2 hours early. She carried as much as possible. The plane was so heavy on takeoff she wasn’t sure even to the end if she could get it off the runway.

For more than 100 years, the Branson/Lakes Area has been attracting visitors to the Ozarks, lured by natural beauty and outdoor recreational activities.
Branson itself was incorporated as a town on April 1, 1912. But the history of settlers and visitors coming to this beautiful part of the Ozarks goes back more than a half-century before that.

Natural Wonders

In 1882, one of the first settlers in the area, Reuben S. Branson, opened a general store and post office. When he submitted the paperwork to the U.S. Post Office department, he listed the community’s name as “Branson,” and the name stuck.

The first family attraction to draw visitors was Marvel Cave (beneath the property where Silver Dollar City theme park is currently located). First called Marble Cave because its limestone walls were thought to be marble, the cave was described by geologists in the 1860s and explored in the 1880s by adventurers who lowered themselves on ropes 200 feet into the main chamber.

Scientific American magazine described the cave in 1885, and word of the natural wonder spread throughout the continent. Canadian mining expert William Henry Lynch read of the cave, purchased it sight unseen, traveled to the Ozarks and, with his two daughters, opened the cave for public tours in 1894.

On the advice of his physician, minister Harold Bell Wright traveled from his home in Kansas to the Ozarks in 1898 to seek a more suitable climate for his health. He stayed at the homestead of John and Anna Ross, whom Wright later immortalized as the characters Old Matt and Aunt Mollie in his best-selling novel “The Shepherd of the Hills.” Published in 1907, the book told the story of the self-reliant and stoic hill people he encountered in the area and of the wooded valleys, the mountain “balds” and the incredible cave he had seen.