You can literally hear history in El Dorado Springs, a community on the northern fringes of the Ozarks that was founded in 1881. The local water was believed to be healing, drawing people like a magnet for its medicinal properties. Even today, you can still hear that water as it trickles from a pipe in the park.
But even louder history is found through the El Dorado Springs Municipal Band, which had its start in the mid-1880s. One hundred and forty years later, the band still gives three concerts — every single weekend — during summer months in that park.
"I don't know of any (community band) that's played three concerts a week through the whole summer for three months," said Gary Hardison, director of the band since 1980. He joined as a member years before, taking up trumpet with the group when Lyndon B. Johnson was president. The band inspires that type of long-term commitment; another example is Teri Biddlecome, a trombonist and the band's announcer.
"It's really common that there are two or three generations playing," she said. "My daughter and her husband teach at McDonald County, and they come home every weekend and play in the band."
It feels like you're part of a bygone age to sit on the green benches near the old-fashioned bandstand and hear tunes on a Sunday afternoon or under the softly setting sun of an evening.
The musicians play marches, swing songs, patriotic tunes and more from the town's bandstand, another piece of history. It was built in the 1930s from rocks locals brought to the park. Today, it's filled with band members ranging from school age to 80s. It's a unique perspective for folks like Steve Banks, who joined when he was in high school. Now he's in his 80s.
"I love doing it," he said. "Another thing is the high school kids — I know a lot of them, and it's an honor to play with them — you know, makes you feel a little younger."
The songs have different names, but they come back to one word: Nostalgia. The band and its park, surrounded like a hug by a native stone wall, are iconic — so much so that they inspired a song by a member of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils rock band called "The Old Rock Wall."
Nick Sibley wasn't a Dare when he wrote the song as a young man, nor was he ever a member of the El Dorado Springs band. But the future professional musician was preserving a core memory of the park and its band, which were in his hometown.
"I guess that was my first music influence, you know, besides radio and TV," he said.
He remembers going to concerts with his grandfather and was so moved by the music that he felt compelled to do one thing — run.
"I would tell my grandpa, 'my legs want to run,' " Sibley said. "I would just run around the bandstand."
Even though I'm not from El Dorado Springs, the band has long fascinated me. It represents a piece of Ozarks history held special in Cedar County, but also the wider region.
In the past, town bands were a big deal across the Missouri Ozarks. El Dorado Springs began as the Wonder City Rube Band. Among other communities, Marshfield, my hometown, had the Cyclone Band, named for the storm that nearly destroyed the town in 1880. There was the Chadwick Community Band in rural Christian County. It's a slightly different category, but Springfield's Boy Scout Band drew fame from across the country. Bands represented culture and community in an era when folks stayed closer to home for entertainment.
Most of those "legacy" bands are gone. The fact that this tradition has survived in El Dorado Springs is notable. Part of that is tied to a funding stream put in place many years ago when local leaders used a tax levy to pay band members. But its existence ties to more than money.
"It's a tradition," said Hardison.
It's there because it's important to generations whose own stories, own weekends, are interwoven with sharing their talents in that park.
"We have a lot of people who don't show up here (at the park), but we hear they're sitting on their porches listening to the music," Biddlecome said.
"If the wind's just right, they can hear us, five, six blocks away," Hardison added.
And, as Biddlecome put it, "That is their tradition, too."
The El Dorado Springs Municipal Band's concerts are free and open to the public. They are held on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons in June, July and August. For more information, click here.
Notable MO-ments is made possible by a grant from the Missouri Humanities Council.
Copyright 2025 KSMU