Modern tourism in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas is concentrated around the area's glistening man-made lakes, its fish-filled streams and rivers, and in the entertainment mecca of Branson. But recreational excursions into this part of the country began over one hundred years ago as urban midwesterners, many of them captivated by Harold Bell Wright's novel The Shepherd of the Hills, sought the outdoors for spiritual and physical regeneration.

Morrow and Myers-Phinney excavate the beginnings of commercial tourism in the region and follow it through six decades as...