What Lies Beneath - Stories About What Is Buried By Table Rock Lake

The Ozarks Johnboat © Tom Koob 2025

An early johnboat

Prior to Table Rock Lake, the White River carved a corridor through the White River Hills of southern Missouri. The stream provided water, food and transportation for the inhabitants of a lonely and beautiful environment. The first settlers to enter the Ozarks found Native Americans plying the river in dugout canoes. New craft were developed to traverse the roaring rapids, shallow shoals and long, deep pools of the White.

Rafts, keelboats and later, steamboats carried goods and people up and down the river. Individuals used canoes and narrow gig boats to navigate the water and eventually developed the Ozarks johnboat. The johnboat became a critical element of the traditional Ozarks float trip.

One of many early boats used on Ozarks streams was the gigging boat. It was a long, narrow wooden craft, usually tapered on both ends, with no seats. It was typically poled rather than rowed. W. H. Johnson describes one in his 1897 article “With Fire-Jack and Gig”:

“It is 24 feet long and 2 feet wide in the center. The sides are about 12 inches high, and each end is raised and narrowed so that it will navigate readily with either end as the prow. There are no seats in the boat.”

In his well-researched article, “What’s in a Name, like John Boat”, Lynn Morrow says the earliest use in print of the term “johnboat” he discovered was in a Federal report on the mussel industry written by Robert Coker in 1919. However, in his second major treatise on the source of the johnboat, “True Sportsmen, Float Trips, Ozarks Ripley’s Johnboat”, Morrow cites a much earlier use of the term related to the Ozarks. Morrow discovered an article by Horace Kephart in the Sportsman Tourist column of Forest and Stream August 3, 1895. In the article, Kephart says he acquired a “John-boat” at Poplar Bluff to float the Black River into Arkansas.

John B. Thompson (who began using the nom de plume “Ozark Ripley” in 1921) settled near Doniphan, Missouri on the Current River around 1892. Thompson was an outlander from a wealthy family, but he was also an avid hunter, fisher and dog breeder. He adapted well to the rural Ozarks and through his experiences and extensive writing made somewhat of a name for himself in the world of outdoor adventure. Thompson used the term johnboat in his writing in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The name became somewhat established in the Current River region, but did not gain acceptance on other Ozarks water- ways for several years.

Lynn Morrow gives Charlie Barnes considerable credit for developing and building the flat-bottomed boats used on the James and upper White River from 1905 to the advent of the big lakes. Charlie built hundreds of these craft for his Barnes Brothers Boating Company and the Jim Owen Boat Line. But Barnes always called these boats “float boats”. Charlie admitted he had seen similar craft in the Current River country.

Ted Sare worked for four years as a guide for Jim Owen, renowned Branson float outfitter. In his book Some Recollections of an Ozarks Float Trip Guide he gives a good description of the johnboats he paddled down the Ozarks streams.

A float party 1907

“The float boat was about twenty feet long, it was made from clear twenty foot pine lumber and the ribs were made of wagon tires, also called wagon rims. Wagon tires are metal, flat on the inside, convex on the outside that covered the outer surface of a wooden wagon wheel. These pieces of wagon tires were shaped so that they ran from the top of the boatside down the side and across the bottom of the boat to the other side. The corresponding piece of the tire down the opposite side of the boat was done the same way so that the two overlapped side by side on the bottom of the boat but were not joined. All this was, of course on the inside of the boat, and maintained the proper shape of the boat.

There were several ribs in the boat since the shape of the sides were not the same throughout, the center flared more than the ends. The boats had some ‘rake’ in them, that is the front turned up just a little, the back even less. The back of the boat had an ample sized seat that filled in the back twenty-eight to thirty inches and was down from the sides about three inches and four and one-half to five inches below the top of the transom. Most guides folded up a canvas tent to just fit on the seat. That not only made a place to haul the tent, but raised the guide up a few inches which gave him a better view of the river. Our boats, that is the Jim Owen boats, had a small seat in the front, no doubt there to aid in the rigidity of the front shape, but also used as a seat or step. I have seen some boats without this front step in them.”

Hundreds of johnboats were built to support the float fishing trade. On land, they were heavy and clumsy, but on the water they could dance under the control of a skilled guide. They could haul hundreds of pounds of gear and still glide over the shallow riffles. Early on, the boats were crude affairs. They were often built on the spot quickly and used for one excursion. At the end of the float, the boats were abandoned or perhaps sold. As the boats and trips became more involved, the craft were hauled back to the starting location by wagon or truck and eventually by railway.

Float boats were a key ingredient of the Ozarks float trip. They not only made the trips possible and enjoyable, they became a part of the lore of the Ozarks. Wooden johnboats were handmade. The boatmen made them using available materials and hand tools. Each was slightly different. Building an Ozarks johnboat can certainly be considered a traditional Ozarks craft. It might be a stretch to call them “works of art”, but they surely carry an aura of the simple skills and simple pleasures of Ozark floatin’. Today, there are still a few individuals who practice the craft of wooden johnboat construction, preserving the legend and reality of an Ozarks classic.

Tom Koob is a local author who has written several books about Ozarks history, including “Buried By Table Rock Lake” and “On the River; A History of the Ozarks Float Trip”.

His work is available on Amazon books or by contacting him at wolpublishing@gmail.com.