Bill Cook to tell story of family's 60-year adventure on Bull Shoals

Bill Cook of Theodosia will talk about his family’s 60-year history in developing and operating what is now the Theodosia Marina Resort during the Oct. 25 meeting of the Ozarks Genealogy and Historical Society at the Historium in Gainesville. The quarterly meeting, which is free and open to everyone, begins with a business meeting at 9:30 a.m., followed by Cook’s presentation at 10 a.m. The Historium is on the west side of the Gainesville square.

Bill Cook was 11 years old when he accompanied his dad, the late L. B. Cook, on the move from Joplin to Theodosia on June 14, 1952. His dad would return to Joplin a few weeks later to bring Bill’s mother and sister, Polly and Barbara, then 15, to join them in their family’s new adventure.

Bull Shoals Dam had recently been completed, and the White River was slowly backing up, flooding what had been bottomland in several areas of Ozark County. The Cooks had signed a contract with the Corps of Engineers to establish a boat dock, café and motel at the Theodosia campground, even though, Bill says, “none of us had any idea what we were doing.”

A circle drive and a one-holer

He remembers driving into the new campground area with his dad in the family’s 1948 Desoto four-door that was “as big as a bus,” Bill said.

The campground area “was just a dirt road in a little circle drive. The only facility there was a one-holer the Corps had provided.”

Buildings in the former village of Theodosia north of the campground had been moved to higher ground, and the Little North Fork of the White River had backed up enough to have flooded much of the village area, he said. The old bridge still carried what little traffic there was across the rising river, but construction would start soon on the new “million-dollar bridge” that would span the lake as Highway 80 (now 160).

Weeds in the campground were “taller than my head, and we slept under the stars – literally, without a tent – from June until September,” Bill said.

They had brought a carpenter/handyman, Tom Curry, with them from Joplin and also hired a local carpenter, Russell Earnest Blankenship, to help them construct the required buildings.

“The folks were building a fish camp – that’s what they called it. They had fished on fishing docks, but they’d never really seen a boatdock,” Bill said. “So we drove over to Pontiac – it was a long way, going around - to see the one that had been built there by the guy who had that contract.”

There were no phones in the area until 1959, and communication was limited. Bill remembers one day in August 1952 overhearing Blankenship ask his dad where Bill would be going to school.

Lutie, his dad answered.

“That's when he informed us Lutie had started more than a week earlier,” Bill wrote in one of his seasonal columns published last summer in the Times. Back in Joplin, schools didn't start until after Labor Day, and L. B. Cook had been so focused on getting the work done he hadn’t thought about asking when school started.

A promising start, and then …

The Theodosia contract was one of the few on Bull Shoals that required the concessionaire to build a motel as well as a café and boat dock. “It was such a remote area, there just weren’t any places to stay yet, although a few places were being built: Duncan’s Lodge, Lonnie and Thelma Robertson’s place, Baker’s Court, and the Youngs had a place out there. Everyone was just getting started,” Bill said.

The Cooks put everything they had into their new investment, and for the first two years, the future seemed as full as the sparkling lake rising around them. Things were off to a promising start. And then, in 1954, a prolonged drought devastated the area, and the lake went dry.

As the water level fell, the boatdock had to be moved away from the Theodosia area back down to the lake’s main channel, several miles away.

Meanwhile, the Cooks’ contract with the Corps continued, and the lease payments still had to be made, Bill said. On top of that, the resort area’s taxes “were higher than anyone else’s in the county,” he said.

L. B. Cook applied to the county board of equalization asking that the taxes be lowered. Instead, said Bill, they were raised.

There were times during those challenging months when his mother would have packed up and moved back to Joplin. “She wasn’t as foolhardy as my dad, I guess,” Bill said. “But Dad was determined to stick it out. Until the day she died, my mom worried that the lake would go dry again.”

From remote fish camp

to summertime city

In the spring of 1955, the rains came, the lake rose, and the Cooks’ fledgling business took off, thanks in part to the dozens of letters L. B. Cook wrote inviting tourists, sportswriters and many others to come to the Ozarks.

There would be other lean years ahead, but through the next six decades, the “fish camp” grew into what has become Theodosia Marina Resort, including not only the boatdock-turned-marina, motel and Cookie’s restaurant but also camping and lodging facilities that can accommodate as many as 1,000 visitors at peak times. The family has expanded too and now includes four generations living and/or working in the Theodosia area, where they also operate Cash Saver Pantry grocery store and a boat and marine-engine service and repair facility.

<p>Bill Cook, head of the family that owns Theodosia Marina Resort, will recount their 60-year history on Bull Shoals Lake in a talk at the Oct. 25 meeting of the Ozark County Genealogy and Historical Society at the Historium in Gainesville. Everyone is invited.</p>