Shell Knob is a small town on the north shore of Table Rock Lake and home to Old Church Gallery, an antique shop, crystal and mineral shop, and fine art gallery that's been here since 2002. It's the kind of place you have to mean to visit. There's no passing through on the way to somewhere else. You come because you know about it, or because someone who loves you sent you here.

Tucked into the Ozark Mountains on the north shore of Table Rock Lake, the town has been finding and reinventing itself since 1835, when Henry and Elizabeth Schell built a trading post on the banks of the White River. The Civil War came through. The post office misspelled the name in 1872 and nobody ever corrected it.

Then in 1958, the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the White River and Table Rock Lake was born: 43,000 acres of clear Ozark water, 800 miles of shoreline. The town that had scraped by on farming became a lake resort, and people started coming from everywhere.

Some of them find their way down Farm Road 1240.