The fanciful Indian name of the spring below the bluff is attributed to Col. R. G. Scott who came from Iowa to the Ozarks in the 1890s and partnered with R. D. Kelly to acquire the land around Gunter Spring. Col. Scott published the first article extolling Ha Ha Tonka’s natural wonders in an 1898 issue of Carter’s Magazine. In it he claimed the name is Osage for “Laughing Water.”
We don’t know the name of the photographer of this arty picture of the spring branch at Ha Ha Tonka with the young man (or possibly a young woman – what do you think?) gazing across the spring branch below the castle on the bluff, but we’re guessing its builder, Robert M. Snyder, commissioned the shot. (Snyder acquired the spring and lands from Col. Scott). If that’s so, we can date it before October 1906 when the Kansas City millionaire died in a freak car accident. “Robert M. Snyder has brains dashed out against an iron trolley pole,” wrote the Springfield News-Leader. (When did that kind of descriptive writing disappear from journalism?)
Most accounts of his death mention his “boodling” (bribery) problems. At trial he had been sentenced to five years. On appeal the court ordered a new trial, but prosecutors failed to pursue it. Surviving him were his widow and three sons. Not long before, another son had been murdered in Oregon where he was a suspect in a bank robbery. That son had already done time for highway robbery…