The Captain and the Judge: Building Camps, Forts, Dams, Bridges, and Character Across the Ozarks

FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, from 1917 until 1942, Camp Carry-On provided a wilderness retreat for girls every summer. Located in Camden County (and later Mountain View), Missouri, the camp taught a variety of physical and character development skills outdoors to girls of all ages, under the direction of Captain Natalie Wilson Prussing, also known as “Captain Nat”. Surviving several transitions, growing and moving as dams flooded once wandering streams, Camp Carry-On provided lasting friendships, with reunions held decades later.

Nat’s friend, Max Prussing surveyed the Bagnell Dam site, built camps and, as commissioner, designed the new town of Camdenton during southern Missouri’s genesis as an energy producing, recreational playground.

The Captain and the Judge – Building Camps, Forts, Dams, Bridges and Character Across the Ozarks tells the story of Camp Carry-On and the lasting love between Nat and Max, later known as “Mr. Fort Leonard Wood”, the chief civil engineer managing that Army base until his retirement.

Read The Captain and the Judge and learn about the first camp for girls in the Ozarks, the creation of “the Lake” and the fascinating lives of this couple who influenced so many!