A Tribute To Lee Mace: A Missouri Show Business Pioneer

In an earlier post I mentioned that I was going to get some pictures of the Lee Mace's Ozark Opry theater and take a dinner cruise with my family on the Tom Sawyer paddle boat.  There was no dinner cruise but I did stop and get some pictures of the closed Lee Mace's theater and here they are:

That is HWY 54 in the background.  The last theater was built on that highway away from the Bagnell dam area. Notice the O is missing in Opry.

From the other side.

Lee Mace was a pioneer who was bringing in crowds and providing weekly live broadcast long before Branson evolved into what it is today.

I have some more pictures of the Bagnell Dam strip, of the paddle boat Tom Sawyer and of the retired, I think,  cruise boat the Captain Larry Don.  There is still a web page for the Captain Larry Don but there are many such ghost sites on the web. The Captain Larry Don is still there but by the looks of things it is no longer an active cruise operation.  

Here is an excellent web page about Lake of the Ozarks history:

http://www.lakehistory.info/