Today, we think of Branson (MO) as a vacation and entertainment spot for mid-America, a mecca of live country music, and the home of Silver Dollar City, but it had an inauspicious beginning that would not have led one to imagine what it has become today.
Branson came into existence in the early 1880s, when about all it amounted to was a post office, and the place was named after the first postmaster, R. S. Branson. The name was changed to Lucia in 1901 but was changed back to Branson in 1904 when a town site was laid out on the north and west banks of a bend in the White River in anticipation of the arrival of the Missouri Pacific and Iron Mountain Railroad.
In late March of 1905, ten months after the town of Branson came into existence, a big write-up promoting the place appeared in a Springfield newspaper. The town site had a thousand lots ranging from 25 feet frontage up to one-acre lots. They were already "many beautiful residences and substantial business houses." However, Branson was "greatly in need of a bank," and it also needed a mill, a canning factory and "in fact most lines of business that one can imagine" since the town was only 10 months old and still "in a formation state."
Although the writer mainly touted Branson because of its mining, timber, agriculture (especially fruit growing), poultry/cattle raising, industrial, and commercial prospects, he did not entirely overlook the town's potential as a resort or vacation spot. Because of the pure waters of White River, he thought it required no prophet to forecast that Branson, with all its natural and acquired advantages, will, even next summer, become a resort, and thousands will go to see this new town."
To have forecast what Branson has become today, however, would indeed have taken a prophet.
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