September 4, 2010

Characters Mammy and Pappy Yokum pose for this 1973 photo at the Boone County amusement park known as Dogpatch USA. Dogpatch was the brainchild of Harrison (Boone County) real estate broker O. J. Snow, who convinced Al Capp to allow him to build a theme park around the town and characters that appeared in Capp’s comic strip “Li’l Abner.” Opening in 1968, the park in the Ozark hills operated until 1993. The park’s financial difficulties had many causes, including competition with the more extravagant Silver Dollar City, located about sixty miles away in Missouri.