Heartland Naturists Message Board - Kansas City MO: Smithville Lake and Heartland Cove

This season - the political season - brings a reminder of the origins of Heartland Cove as a nude beach.

From the 1980s into the early 1990s I'd to find a place on the water in the KC metro area that would provide the right combination of seclusion and easy access for nude use. I was selfishly interested mostly for my own skinny-dipping and sunning. But also for the local nudist community which included around a hundred members of the Heartland Club in 1996.

The Heartland Club held indoor swims but there was no nearby outdoor location that met the criteria of seclusion, access and water in the summer. I'm sure many of the coves and beaches at Smithville Lake have seen skinny-dipping and all over tanning on occasion but to my knowledge there was no one place that was used regularly nor widely known by nudists.

I decided to start surveying the Lake over a period of time for such an access spot. There was nothing formal about the "survey" and I wasn't a regular at Smithville but knew some the roads and some of the access spots.

One of my first scouting trips was on election day afternoon in November 1996. I'd made the rounds of a few of the campaign locations that afternoon then drove up to the Lake - maybe my 2nd scounting trip. It was a cloudy and a reasonably mild - temps in the 60s - actually fairly warm for the time of year. I decided to scout around Public Access 1 - the end of King Road near Trimble and about six miles north of the town of Smithville. The gravel road used to cross that arm of the lake but once the Lake filled it was split and the Corps created two public access circle drives - on on each side of a narrow arm of the Lake.

I parked in the circle at Public Access One and began by simply walking the shoreline to the "right" or south from the access point. First there's a rather open cove that was too close to the public access and too exposed. Around a sharp bend from there however a pretty crescent shaped cove that was out of sight of the road, removed enough from the access spot so it'd not be too much shoreline foot traffic and had lots of standing timber that would keep motorboats out the area. Looked like a possible for what I was looking for. I found out it was easier to get to by parking back at a wire gate and waking across a hay field and that became the most commonly used way to the Cove.

I can swim in pretty chilly water - more so in 1996 than in 2008. On trips to the west coast I usually get in the surf and none of those beaches ever have what we'd call warm water. So on a cloudy Election Day in November 1996 I stripped and took my first dip in a nondescript and unnamed cove of Smithville Lake. Liberated it you might say. No fanfare - no announcement - my own spot since that was really all I was looking for initially.

I continued to look at other possible sites - some were candidates but most required a much longer walk from the road than the Cove I found - some had access but were more exposed to open water without the buffer of standing timber that would provide some cover and insure most boaters kept their distance from the shoreline. In the end none seemed better suited than the first spot I landed on - so that was the strip of beach that was homesteaded and still remains in use as the Lake's free beach.

For the early part of 1997 I didn't make an issue of the spot but returned to it now and then to lay out and swim. The water of the cove was entirely open then - none of the aquatic plants that have taken over in recent years had encroached. Maybe some cattails on the south arm but the infestation of milfoil, water lilies and cattails was nearly all in the future.

The name Heartland Cove came into use in 1997 and the photos that still reside on the Cove webpage were taken in late 1997. I was really concerned that the place be kept private and nearly secret since I knew such use would not meet with favor from the Corps or the Park Rangers. The Cove saw very little use for quite a few years. Even after it was mentioned via the club's online notes it was very rare to encounter another user on any given visit to the Cove.

Over time some regulars evolved - there was a May ritual of weed whacking a narrow path down through the hay field. Lately a better mowed path has been the norm with more than one mowing during the season.

Cove users from the outset were pretty responsible about trash and also from the outset some did cleanup duty for the stuff others left behind. Seldom was trash a big problem which is one reason we've been able to keep good but arm's length relations with the Lake managers.

A website was finally set up but the wish was still to keep the location as a sort of insider bit of info and for the most part that's still the case although for several years now it's been listed in the Naturist Society's Guide to Nude Beaches and some other national guides. And hey, we made the Pitch as Kansas City's Best Nude Beach this year, 2008.

Heartland Cove itself has changed with the influx of the aquatic plants - they eventually will choke off the cove and already users can only swim off the north or south arms due to the water lilies. A lake is a living organism and coves evolve - Heartland is evolving in a manner that's not favorable for swimming. The beach itself comes and goes with the variations in water level but users have learned to accommodate that and live with the cycles of wet years and dry years.

Twelve years of skinny-dipping and sun worship at Heartland Cove coming up early next month, November 2008. When you vote think of Heartland Cove's own inauguration in 1996.

Dick Williams
Kansas City MO

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Re: Smithville Lake and Heartland Cove - some history