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I'll get this started with a mention of SDC's funnyest show ever, The Boxing Show which was a summer show in the craft barn (then known as the wagonworks barn) in Deepwoods in 1978.
Bleachers were set up around a boxing ring and a British boxing champ would challange all comers to last three rounds with him for a prize of $100.00. Of course this was all a setup. There would be popcorn and soda venders walking around the bleachers and when the champ came out he would grab a popcorn and dump it over the venders head. We'd all boo. The chalange would come and who should answer the call than a couple of hillbilly brothers, the smart one who wants the money and the dumb one who is going to fight without a clue. This was played by one of Bransons funnyest men, Wayne Milnus, longtime star of the Toby Show, SDC's undertaker, later to be Judge at the SDC courthouse (more on that show another time), and many more. The ring was rigged with a mini tramp so he could do huge leaps over Percy (the champ) and at one point he would grab a rope hanging from a beam and do wild swings out over the audiance! He would end by accedentaly knocking out the champ and winning the purse.
The show only ran there one summer becouse entertainment lost the use of the barn but  it beacame a regular show ar SDC TN the next few seasons, using shots from the MO version in there brochures.

I've seen a lot of shows mentioned on other threads so how bout one for the shows themselves.  Street shows, music acts, theater shows, night shows, visiting acts, etc Any memories? Tales? Questions? Deep knawing moral issues? Oh.. hold it ...that's another thread....

There is a doorway to the right of the "Do not look in this hole" hole. One of those employee only things? (If its still there that is) Just up from Jack and Mary's? There is (or was?) a coart yard with a tree in the middle just behind that door. rock wall and seating around it. Theaming on the back of Grandfathers mansion and the other buildings around it. Why?  This is the old mid town public restroom area. Before the ones at the bottem of hill street (Cardiac Hill) were built. Just a pointless fact

1970s home video from SDC... It shows the mural in the Hospitality House being painted
The mural in question is (or was) located at the tram exit from the Ozark Marketplace. The artist is the same one who painted the H.H. murals and died soon after  that vidio was shot if I am correct.....
The Marketplace was a two story shop at the time with wide stairs going up where the dulcimer shop is now. upstairs was an artist gallery featuring about a dozen artists at work and an observation deck that looked out over the valley. It's all offices now.

As to the float trip cave, I worked on winter construction on the conversion from float trip to plunge. the channel  was wider for the float trip so the new channel  was pored in the old one. and rane backwards from the old ride. The theme chainged over the years from a search for Bill Jones who after passing sunken rescue boats ladden with turtle soup, tipping outhouses and grampas still, was found frozen in the cave covered in ice cicles. and concluded by drifting past tombstones of a dozon people found frozen, none of whome were Bill Jones.
Next speakers were placed in the boat so the ghost of Matilda Jones looking for her husband Puddgy would tell you the tail.  It was then that the River Gang Club House and the Camping scene were added We pased the ghosts dancing in the cave one of whom was Puddgy dancing with another woman! You then passed a mirror showing Matilda in your boat with you brandishing a rolling pin. We found her still walled up in the cave durring the transition. Also in the cave were glowing blinking eyeballs, and a rushing torrent of water which almost swamps the boat.
the last change was durring the kid friendly era when all the ghosts went away and were replaced with singing gnomes. It was horrid!

SDC's first puppet show was in the early 70's in what was then the Vineyard Restrant on the corner of Main and Hill street. A corprate sponsership was forged with Welch's Grape Juice to launch there new white and red grape juices. They wanted entertainment with a plug for them, so was born the "Wally Welch Revew", featuring an all grape cast of singing and talking grape puppets. The show went away with the sponsership  around 1978 or so the story says.....but after all the years the gristly truth can be told. One day while dining there I accidentally sat on Wally Welch and mashed him flat. He said nothing from that day forward...but he did let out a little wine. (Pause 2,3......)

As I recall a broken arm, cuts, bruses, etc. Late 70's early 80s's? There used to be a sign that said 'Built 1880 re-built 1881" that disapeared after that incedent.

Shad campained against Eaton Doolittle ("and thats exactly what I pledge to do...") played by now entertainment manager and former River Rat ,author of the Huck Fin Hideaway theme song, and that guy with the trained pig, etc..D.A. Calaway whose election motto was vote early, vote often! A stuntman was envoled in one of the campain shows hanging a banner from the saloon to the tower at the entrance to the Lunbercamp restrant. he did a tarsan swing from the banner. The show cycle ended in a parade through town that all the kids could join and the anouncement of Shad 's re-election.
It was featured as one seasons brochure cover. (or maybe the street map handout?)

One year in the 70s the powers that be decided that there were not tnough activitys for young kids. Every ride had somthing scarry for them, caves on the float trip, a dark mine, FITH"s whole experiance, etc. They changed the theme of the tree house from a still to a root beer factory, built a playground, took out the scarry stuff in the float trip cave, and added a new theater between McHaffies and the H.H. that featured a story teller, and a pupet show called " Ruffus The Littlest Mule."   This was the story of the mule that eventualy got to turn the one mule swing for the kids. There was even a tie in book for this. (as well as two others.) IT was a popular show.One day during mid summer the puppeter locked up for the night an went home. Next morning he returned to find the theater a pile of rubble. It seems that someone in Maitainance misread a work order and plowed down the wrong building!. The puppeter dug the puppets from the pile and for the rest of the summer Ruffus became a homeless mule roaming the streets for ther kids untell the first dockside theater was built to house his show the next season.

O.K.
Another Quick one.
The Craft festival was the citys first festival, to get more attendance on the off season in the fall.
The spring was there next focas with "Root Diggin Days" featuring Ozark Herbalist Chick Allen. Games were the big draw like taffy pulls, Red Flannel Underwear Getin' out of Contests, and my fav, A main street tug of war. All comers against a two ton steam engine!!

Many years ago the swinging bridge cable anchor broke when a large group (over 50)of not very bright teens decided to all jump together on it. They quickly samk new pillings and reinforced it so it could not happen again!

I visited at the park every year from 1960 to 1976, then worked there from 77 to 94.
At one point we had three generations of my family there scattered between Entertainment, crafts, foods and admin.
It was difficult leaving S.D.C. my home town, and other than a short stint in the fall of 98, I haven't been back. 

There was a shallow cave at water level that you can just make out th the right of the scale room in the second picture on sams page. What you are seeing is where groups of around 40 would be let in one one of two "Scales" where the group would be weighed to act as ballast to "get the bell to stink.... er sink". From there your group would walk breafly out onto docks on the backside where the Junior would step on  a footswich which caused the "bell" to come out of the cave right next to the dock go out about 10 feet and submerge. This was only a small top, and timed so that everyone in the group was  into the caves and boarding their bell by the time it backed into its cave again. Hope that helps in track spotting.
The bright panel to the right of the view screen was a map which flew up as the rock broke through.
The water was pumped up from a stock tank below the bells, and on the "Last ride of Rube Dugin" a friend of mine dumped dye into the tank. The junior was shocked when he went to slap his hand over the leaking pipe and the water went from clear to ink black!
Eli was foiled by the way becouse his paddles were cought on a stalagmite.
The movie you spoke of was filmed in 1977 as part of the R.D. launch

There used to be a little stage called the Valley Theater next to where the entrance to Thunderation is now, and he would perform there.  The magic shop is very close to where it was.

The magic shop is the old Valley Theater. Before Thunderation this was a quiet corner of town and the little theater was a great late afternoon place to relax. You can see it an this CD cover
http://www.witheandstone.com/Music/

The Mark Twain you refered too was Keith Scarborough who is now a preacher in St. Louis I believe. He also played Huck Finn in a Hannibal MO outdoor theater when he was young.
http://www.brokeith.com/about.htm

For one season in late 1950's, (pre SDC days) the property was Marval cave park and the Marlin Perkins Zoo.  Marlin, from Carthage, Missouri, was at the time host of a Chicago based TV show called Zoo Parade and few years latter he became the longtime host of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

Pete Hershend, one of the most  inteligent and witty men I have had the pleasure to have known, refers to the SDC logo as the "Stump and Cumquat"

In the "What were they thinking" catagory:

Early 60"s main street Demo/show, the old game of "shooting the anvil" .
The two anvils used were placed on the ground in th middle of main street. The largest of the anvils was placed upside down.  Black powder, was poured into the bottom of the anvil on the ground leaving a small opening at one end directly under the small opening at the squared end of the top anvil (which was also placed into position upside down and crossways) so that the small round hole in the squared end was directly over the opening beneath. Into this round hole was poured enough black powder to form a firing train. Then  Shad Heller the blacksmith heated a long, thin iron rod red hot in his forge, the men charging the anvil stood to one side, and the sizzling iron was applied to the powder. Then came the loudest bang you ever heard. and the upper anvil sailed down the length of the street.
This was a once a day show untel one day as they were cleaning up after they discovered a chunk missing from one of the anvils. It was latter found imbedded in the wall of the general store just above head height behind where the spectators had been standing. 

In a part two, one of the other shows was a mussel loading contest with two cannons set on a platform behind the church. Union vs Reb vets would chalange each other to hit targets set up on the far side of the valley. The union always won Because the show was all riged. They were firing coffee cans filled with sand which would theoreticly fall into the lake long before reaching the target. The target blew up becouse Rex Matsenbacher (his emloyee number was 5) would be behind a tree and when he heard the report would set of a charge attached to the target.

All went went well untel one day he was relaxing in the sun, when he heard the canon go off. He was just about to hit his switch when a coffee can sailed through the branches and landed about a foot from where he was sitting. They never did the show again.

Rex is mentioned in an artical on SDC glassblowing at:
http://www.stateoftheozarks.net/Cultural/Craftsmanship/Glassblowing.html

I have to pass all this on now that the good folks who related these storys to me are no longer with us. SDC was always terrable at archiving their own history. I hope all of you can help preserve it.

More tidbits late next week.....

All right . I promised a follow up so here it is.
SDC always had a shortage of level land. Durring the aformentioned St. Louis poll, a new coaster concept was pitched tha not only involved the first coaster of its kind, not just a new area, but in fact a whole new town connected by the steam train, wagons and walkways, Williams Gap. You've all gone through it on the train. Out from that spot is long flat and very pretty ridge (including the remaines of an old 1940's cabin and tree house!) that offered a whole new development oportunity. 
It was to be a new Deepwoods kind of area, crossed with what was to become forgotten crafts, with woodchips, wildflowers, rustic, with shops like a cooppers, log cabin building, etc.  What the area needed was a big draw and it was big. My concept was SDC's first outdoor coaster. The theme was this:
An excentric inventor had recently returned from St. Louis where he had seen a remarkable new invention that sent Money and papers from one spot in a building too another by means of pneumatic tubes!. If it could be done small scale......
He needed a place to build however out of sight of compeditors so he chose the tiny town of Williams Gap to build his prototype.
It started as you walked past the giant pumping engines into the depot facing a large victiorian curved glass wall on big chains. this lifted to present an enclosed glass and wroght iron car with plush velvet seats and brass trim. the door was closed on your car which was to all viable effect (but not really) shot through a glass tube ringed with more iron through the trees, an underground tunnel, then back to the depot. In reality it was a coaster that rode on tracks on the sides of the cars and could do barrel rolls and dip into curves. ( this kind of coaster was invented several years later. I remember playing it on Roller Coaster Tycoon! ) Even though the car was enclosed,the track was really open with rings at intervels except for the firsts few hundred yards where you could see the tracks from the walkways which were indeed glass tubes.

The concept grew to making the area itsef a spot for a grand exposition with halls, rides,  a 360 soundscape storytelling theater (my concept again still untried) and games, some of which have now come to pass in the, well, Grand exposition.

The concept got the highest marks on the survey, but proved to costly to implement at the time, and Jack was reluctant to head down that coaster road. "Once a park heads that direction", he said, "your pretty much commited to a new high ticket ride every few years." He was certenly right. Eventualy the path was taken, but long after this concept was forgotten.