Bridge & Dam Half Marathon, 10K & 5K

The Bridge and Dam Half Marathon, 10K and 5K runs on Saturday, April 11, 2026, in Lake Ozark, Missouri, with all three distances departing from the Bagnell Dam Scenic Overlook at 7:30 AM and following courses through the Lake of the Ozarks dam corridor and its surrounding ridge-line roads. The post-race celebration at Neon Taco closes the event with the awards ceremony and the lakeside gathering that gives a small community running event its particular social character: the convergence of participants who have just shared an outdoor experience in the same landscape that Lake of the Ozarks’ residential and resort community occupies year-round.

The Course and Its Setting

The Bagnell Dam, completed in 1931 and stretching 148 metres across the Osage River to create Lake of the Ozarks, provides the architectural centrepiece of the course’s starting environment. The Bagnell Dam Strip, which runs along the dam’s crest and has served as the resort community’s primary commercial corridor since the 1930s, gives the race a historic industrial infrastructure backdrop that distinguishes the Lake Ozark course from the generic suburban greenway routes that many Missouri road races occupy. The Half Marathon’s 13.1-mile route uses the ridge-line terrain north and east of the dam to build a course with genuine elevation variation, while the 5K and 10K distances focus their routes in the dam corridor where the lake views and historic infrastructure concentrate.

If You’re Going With Kids: The 5K, at 7:30 AM alongside the longer distances, provides a family-appropriate race distance in a setting where the Bagnell Dam Scenic Overlook’s views across the lake provide the visual reward at the start that road 5K events in commercial districts cannot match. Children who complete a 5K at an event where their parent runs a half marathon simultaneously share the experience and the finish line celebration at Neon Taco in a format that builds the sport’s intergenerational momentum without the age-gap awkwardness of shared-pace events. The Lake of the Ozarks State Park, approximately 20 kilometres south of Lake Ozark via Missouri Highway 134, provides the family afternoon extension for post-race recovery in one of Missouri’s largest state parks.

Ha Ha Tonka and the Karst Landscape

Ha Ha Tonka State Park, within the Lake of the Ozarks State Park complex, combines the ruins of an early 20th-century stone castle, a natural bridge, sinkholes, a 12-story bluff above the Niangua arm of Lake of the Ozarks, and a spring that feeds directly into the lake’s western tributary. The castle, begun in 1905 by Kansas City businessman Robert M. Snyder and never completed due to his death in one of Missouri’s first automobile accidents in 1906, now stands as a substantial stone ruin whose architectural ambition and tragic backstory make it one of the Ozarks’ most genuinely compelling human-scale historical sites. For families and runners making the Bridge and Dam race into a Lake of the Ozarks weekend, Lake.com lists the Sunset Vibes Retreat Lakefront Condo with Pool and the Lakeview Lake Ozark Condo with Pool as waterfront rental options in the Osage Beach and Lake Ozark corridor.