Come and travel Oklahoma with me.

Arrow from the Past

August 26, 2016

Arrow

UPDATE:  As of November 9, 2018 the current Space Needle that took the place of this arrow is being torn down.  It was badly damaged after a flood in June 2010.  Some believe that the fairgrounds administration never intended to fix the space needle and wanted to demolish it.  No I’m not happy to see more of Oklahoma’s history being destroyed.  Hopefully something will be saved from the space needle.

I spend a lot of time driving the back roads of Oklahoma and while out in the country southwest of Yukon, I found something that really intrigued me- a big arrow.  Just sitting in this field, rusting away.  Odd, definitely not something you normally see so I had to learn more about this strange sight.  Turns out it is quite important to the history of Oklahoma and the state fair.

In 1957, the state of Oklahoma held its Semi-Centennial Exposition at the new State Fair Park.  The fairgrounds had only recently been moved from its location around NE 10th and Douglas to the home we know now at NW 10th and May.  This celebration, held June 14th- July 7th, was a big deal.  Not only did the fairgrounds stay open 24 hours a day, but well- known performers of the time such as Patti Page and Mickey Rooney made appearances.  The Today show from NBC hosted by Dave Garroway broadcast live so the whole country could see the excitement of the crowds.  As a center piece to this great celebration was the Arrows to Atoms tower.  A 200 foot tall red and white arrow with an atom just below the tip, I have been told that you could see it for miles even at night when the point was illuminated from inside making a red glow.  This tower had been dedicated at few months before on April 22, 1957 and represented the progress Oklahoma had made in 50 years.

This tower stayed in the middle of the fairgrounds until 1967 when it was deemed structurally unsound and was removed.  It was replaced the next year by the landmark we all know now as the Space Needle.  What many do not know is that after removal, the arrow was cut down to about 80 feet and placed on land owned by an employee of the Utility Tower Company (who had originally built it) near SW 59th and Frisco Roads.  Even though the property (called Odd Acres by some locals) has changed hands a few times, that arrow still sits on the side of the road.  It’s no longer red and white and the atom is long gone (even though I’ve heard the rumor that it was placed on top of the current space needle, I can’t confirm this), it provides a great nesting place for birds.  Just a piece of Oklahoma history, sitting in plain sight and unfortunately rotting away.

Arrow Point

Originally red, the arrowhead is 15 feet tall and lit from the inside.

Arrow bottom

The tail section was 26 feet tall.  You can still just make out the red on the outside panels with white down the middle.

 

Category:

Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City fairgrounds, Oklahoma history, State Fair of Oklahoma

Comments Off on Arrow from the Past

Tagged with:

Vacation Time With New Food

June 24, 2016

100_9132We just got back from our annual family vacation and the rule while we are traveling is that we can’t eat anywhere that we have back in Oklahoma.  So we get to try many different places and get to try chain restaurants that aren’t in Oklahoma City yet.  After a week away from the great state of Oklahoma, I’m back with my requests for new restaurants to move here.  Now we have done pretty good recently- we did get Zaxby’s and Dairy Queen has come back to the Oklahoma City market.  But there are still plenty of others that need to enter the metro to take my money.

The biggest of them all is In-N-Out.  I am more than willing to sacrifice the governor and other crooked lawmakers just to bring one to Oklahoma City.  Their restaurants are clean and nice, as are their employees but it’s the burgers that make you drive 4 hours across state lines just to get.  If you haven’t been to an In-N-Out, then you need to know it is just a burger place.  Simple as that- you can get a hamburger, cheeseburger, or double cheeseburger.  There is a “secret” menu, that’s where you’ll find the double-double animal style (my favorite).  It comes with fried onions, pickles, and more sauce.  The only drawback is that they don’t have bacon, but it’s really not that big of a deal.  The only side available is fries.  So yeah, this place is simple and they only do one thing, but damn they do it right.  Right now you have to risk your life and go to Texas but I’m hoping that some day they will realize that half their Texas business comes from Oklahoma and move to the Sooner state.

Another chain that needs to come to Oklahoma City is Fuddruckers.  I know back in the 1980’s we had a few in town but I guess there were problems in the upper management, and they went away.  There is one in Tulsa and several in the Dallas area but it’s time we get one here.  I can even pick out a few good places out here on the Highway to Hell (NW Expressway if you haven’t been keeping up with me).  Fuddruckers is more of a fast casual, better than Chili’s or Applebee’s.  Their burgers are killer good as well with so many different options that you can get it just about any way you want.  They also have hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, and salads but I only go for the burgers.  Big thick burgers with whatever you want topping them, then a trip to the burger bar to add your own condiments.

Now we also ate a few others that were ok, but I can live without.  One place that I found, that is not a chain is in Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Yes, you read that right- not Nevada, New Mexico.  Located northeast of Santa Fe, it’s on I-25.  This is where we found Charlie’s Spic & Span Café.  Not just a restaurant but bakery, this was singlehandedly the best place we found this year.  All day breakfast, Mexican, and American food on the menu, which was all really good.  The enchiladas were the best I’ve ever had in a restaurant (my husband makes some that would make you understand why I’m married to him).  My husband had a burger on jalapeño bread with fresh jalapeño’s in the melted cheese.  But as good as the food was, the bakery had the really good stuff.  I mean cinnamon rolls the size of my husband’s hand.  These were better than the ones at the fair.  And they lasted all the way home.  The apple fritters were easily the size of 2 softballs and the doughnuts were covered in dark chocolate.  It is my recommendation that if you are heading out west on I-40, get off on US Highway 84, head about 30 north to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and find this wonderful place.  I know from now on, we’ll be stopping every time through.  (If you are a history nerd like me, the town is so cool and has so much to look at, really worth a stop).

So maybe we’ll get lucky and get some new places to eat in the future.  In the mean time, I’ll just keep trying other new places around town.

100_9472

 

 

 

Category:

Oklahoma, Oklahoma food

2 Comments

Tagged with:

Medieval Fair in Norman

April 8, 2016

Owl at Medieval Fair in Norman 8

Owl at Medieval Fair in Norman.  2015

In Oklahoma, the winter can be cold and boring.  That’s why so many of us look forward to spring and all the activities it brings.  Not long after spring break in March the festivals and fairs begin.  One of the best has been held in Norman at the beginning of April for the past 40 years- the Medieval Fair.

This event was started in 1977 by the English department at the University of Oklahoma.  It was just a one day event held on the South Oval in celebration of the birth of William Shakespeare.  After a few years the popularity of the fair forced it to be moved to the Duck Pond and expanded to two days.  This is how I first remember the fair- I was 15 and as part of my high school English assignment we had to go experience the fair.  There were demonstrations on how to use ancient weapons, exhibitions on medieval clothing,  and a mermaid perched near the stone bridge over the pond.  The crowds were still small but that would change in just a few years.  As a student at OU, I went again in the early 1990’s.  There were more people, most dressed in costume, and vendors selling clothing and fake weapons.  I didn’t go back until 1999 when I tried to take my husband for his first visit, but the crowds were so big you could hardly even see the pond.  We drove by slowly on Lindsay Street and left.

The University and the city of Norman obviously noticed this as well because in 2003, it was moved about a mile south to Reaves Park.  You would think being in a bigger park would help spread the crowds out but I think it just invited more to attend.  In 2007 I finally took my husband with Mae now in tow for their first trip, now we try to go every other year.  This year just happened to have a nice Saturday, so we went.

We got there nice and early to get a good parking spot at the Lloyd Noble Center.  The fair itself is free, but the University charges five dollars to park across the street from Reaves Park.  Once you enter the fair, you can find almost anything you want as long as it’s from the middle ages.  There is an archery stand set up so you can pretend to be Robin Hood, fortune tellers more than happy to tell you what you want to hear about your future, and lots of vendors selling everything from costumes and jewelry to leather and metal goods.  Of course there is also a huge selection of food vendors and that’s where we started.  Yeah, they have the corn dogs, turkey legs, and funnel cake but we wanted something else so we stopped at Helmut’s Strudel.  Mae had an apple strudel while me and my husband shared a Bavarian cheesecake strudel along with a spinach and cheese puff pastry.  It was a good “breakfast” to start with, then we just wandered around, enjoying the atmosphere.  Since Mae is getting more interested in clothing, she had to stop and look at the dresses and corsets for sale.  My husband took a liking to some of the mock medieval weapons, he might need some since Mae is starting to attract male suitors.  But for all the stuff being sold, there are still plenty of reenactments of life in the middle ages.  We watched “knights” doing battle, belly dancers, Irish step dancers, minstrels, and a real jousting exhibition.  The cool part of this fair is that even with the big crowds, the majority are dressed up in costume.  Just about everywhere you look you can find knights, lords and ladies of the court.  Even though there is no pond, you can find mermaids sitting in a ship.

Overall the Medieval Fair in Norman is a lot of fun for everyone.  So set aside the first weekend in April so you can venture back in time for just a while.

 

Category:

Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma

Comments Off on Medieval Fair in Norman

Tagged with:

Food Friday: Nhinja Sushi & Wok

April 1, 2016

NhinjaHere is another restaurant my husband introduced me to- Nhinja.  He actually learned about it from the owner, Kang Nhin.  He always likes trying new places, so one night he took Mae with him for dinner.  If she liked it then he knew I would like it.  About a month later we went and even though I really like my Chinese food from a buffet, it wasn’t bad.

They do have a pretty big selection on their menu but I’ve recently been on a sushi trip and they have some of the best in town.  First of all, they list the ingredients on the menu.  I’m real picky about what I have in my sushi- no caviar or fish eggs of any sort, no salmon, light on the veggies.  So it’s easy to order your sushi and it’s made right then, hasn’t been sitting around.  The rolls are huge, so one roll is more than enough for one person.  My two favorites are the Thunder and Geisha, but the others I have had are good as well.  My husband has tried almost everything on the menu but his favorite is the Cashew Chicken.  Once again, huge portions with lots of veggies and rice.  Mae is more predictable, she sticks with her Honey Chicken and then won’t eat the rice.  We do almost always start with the Cream Cheese Puffs.  Crab meat, cream cheese, and scallions wrapped up and deep-fried.

The service is always good, no matter if you are eating there or getting it for take out.  The atmosphere is fun, lots of colors, and bottles of Japanese sodas on the wall.  I give it five strips of bacon.  There are five locations around Oklahoma City, so it should be easy to find one.

Address: Rockwell- 12021 North Rockwell Ave., Oklahoma City;  May- 13905 North May Ave., Oklahoma City;  Broadway- 5 West 15th St., Edmond;  Mustang Rd.-  335 South Mustang Rd.

Category:

Food, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma food

Comments Off on Food Friday: Nhinja Sushi & Wok

Tagged with:

Food Friday: Venezia Italian Ristorante

March 25, 2016

VeneziaI love Italian food but it really can be hard to find a good Italian restaurant in Oklahoma City.  A few years ago we found one right near our house.  Located in the strip mall on the northwest corner of Northwest Highway and Council is Venezia Italian Ristorante.  We had been hearing good things about it from friends and finally had a chance to stop in one night when we didn’t have a child with us.

It was a busy Saturday night but we were seated quickly.  We started with the fried calamari, delivered on a huge plate, this was some of the best calamari I’ve had in a long time.  It’s really hard to get calamari fried just right but they had pulled it off, so now I had high hopes for the rest of dinner.  I wasn’t disappointed.  After a small dinner salad, my fettuccine carbonara was brought out.  Once again the serving was huge.  The Alfredo sauce was perfect- creamy and buttery with ham and peas mixed in.  My husband had the lasagna, also a huge serving, he enjoyed it as did I when I had a small bite.  For dessert we had cannoli, a treat that was almost unheard of years ago when my grandmother introduced it to me.  For a long time the only way to get it was to order it from back east, but now it’s getting to be more common in Oklahoma.

Everything was really good, like I said it’s hard to find good Italian food in Oklahoma so I’m happy to have Venezia close by.  We’ve been back several times and everything is always good- food and service.  I know there is a second location in Del City but I haven’t been there yet, so this review is only for the NW Expressway location.  I give it 5 strips of bacon.

Address: 8109 NW Expressway, Oklahoma City; 201 S. Sooner Rd., Del City.

 

 

 

Category:

Food, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma food

Comments Off on Food Friday: Venezia Italian Ristorante

Tagged with:

Geary, Home of the Gillespie Building and a Water Trough

March 2, 2016

Gillespie Building

1903 Gillespie Building in Geary, OK, placed on NRHP in 1989.  2016

Since the month of February was abnormally warm, we picked a nice Saturday afternoon and just went out for a drive.  We ended up in the town of Geary, a small town of about 1,200 people forty miles west of Oklahoma City.  Not really much there and nothing really to do, but they did have a really nice old downtown with some interesting buildings.

Downtown Geary

Downtown Geary, OK. 2016

So lets start with a brief history of Geary first- founded in April of 1892 when the first non-Indian settlers were allowed in during the Cheyenne-Arapaho Opening, the town was actually over a mile north of its present location.  It was moved south shortly after to meet the Choctaw, Oklahoma, and Gulf railroad being built from El Reno.  The post office was officially established on October 12, 1892 with the town being named after Edward Guerrier, a U.S. Army scout and interpreter who settled north of the town site.   The town grew rapidly with the population getting all the way up to around 2,500.  A big boost for the small town came in 1912 when the Postal Highway came through, this later became the original path for Route 66.  Unfortunately, Geary’s portion of Route 66 was bypassed in 1934.

Now the town is quiet, not much to do.  So why was I there, I wanted to see two places that are on the National Register of Historic Places.  The first was hard to miss- The Gillespie Building.  Siting on the southeast corner of Main and Highway 281, can’t miss the big red brick building.  It was built in 1903 by Ed Gillespie.  Originally a bank, it served many other businesses until it became a museum.  Unfortunately it looks as though the museum has been closed for a while.

Just a block east on Main Street is the second NRHP location and has to be the most unique, the Public Water Trough.  I know it sounds weird right, but this was really a big deal to farmers who came to town.  The trough was placed near the railroad depot and grain elevators in 1901.  This was at a time when the farmers would bring their product into town by horse-drawn wagons and it was helpful to have somewhere for those horses to get a drink.  You really have to think of it as an early gas station.  The original trough was wooden with the water pumped from a well close by, but sometime in the 1920’s it was redone with concrete and connected to city water.  It was used frequently up until the 1940’s.  The city of Geary had four of these troughs around the city and for some reason this was the only one to survive.

Public Horse Trough

Public Water Trough, Geary, OK, placed on NHRP in 1989. 2016

So that was my exciting visit to Geary, I did walk around the small downtown but there were no restaurants and all the businesses were closed.  If you ever find yourself in that direction, just take a few minutes to walk around and enjoy the history.

1910 building in Geary

1910 Brake Building in downtown Geary, OK. 2016

old service station in Geary

Another old building in downtown Geary, OK.  Possibly had been a service station or automotive dealership.  2016

 

Category:

National Register of Historic Places, Oklahoma

Comments Off on Geary, Home of the Gillespie Building and a Water Trough

Tagged with:

Food Friday: Gyro City Cafe

January 15, 2016

Gyro City CafeI had seen gyro’s offered for years but never tried them until I met my husband.  He introduced them to me on the first trip we made together to the Oklahoma State Fair.  Once again, another wonderful food he had brought into my life.  The only problem was for many years the only place I thought I could get them was at the fair.  For some odd reason I just didn’t think you could get them anywhere else, so a few years ago while complaining that I wanted a gyro but it wasn’t fair season my husband spoke up, “You know there’s a gyro place down Northwest Highway, right?”  Well no, I never realized that I had been driving right by Gyro City Café for years.
For those of you who don’t know what a gyro is, let me explain- it’s a Greek sandwich with meat, onions, tomato, and tzatziki sauce rolled up in a pita.  The meat can be any type from beef, veal, mutton, pork or chicken as long as it’s cooked on a vertical rotisserie.  This type of sandwich has been around since ancient times being developed in the Mediterranean.  It’s a different type of sandwich but it is good and Gyro City Café makes one of the best in town.  They pile so much meat on that it’s almost impossible to fold up the pita, but that’s ok, you know you’re not getting cheated.  You can leave off any of the veggies and the sauce comes in a little cup so you can control how much you get.
If you order the meal at Gyro City Café, you get the huge gyro, a can of pop, and french fries.  Their fries are just regular crinkle cut fries but the way they’re cooked makes them perfect.  Crispy on the outside, just the way I like them.  You can also get baklava as dessert.  A treat also from the Mediterranean, it’s a pastry with nuts and soaked in honey.
So if you’re in Northwest Oklahoma City and near the Highway to Hell, stop by Gyro City Café.  I give it five strips of bacon.
Address: 7300 Northwest Expressway, Oklahoma City.  On the south side of the road just west of Rockwell in the Rockwell Plaza.

Gyro City Cafe 2

 

Category:

Food, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma food

Comments Off on Food Friday: Gyro City Cafe

Tagged with:

The Santa in the Window

December 21, 2015

Santa in the WindowChristmas is all about tradition.  Every year you get out the decorations that you’ve had forever and you get together with family.  The Farley family is all about tradition- we’ve done the same thing for Christmas since before I was here.  The whole family would gather at Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Tipton on Christmas Eve, they would eat fried oysters and chocolate cake, then open the presents piled around the tree.

This is the environment I was born into, as long as I can remember my dad would load up the car with luggage and presents for the two hour drive from Oklahoma City to Tipton.  As much as my dad loved Christmas, he never started shopping until December 24th.  He thought that’s when you got the best deals, so that whole day he would be gone, not coming back home until almost 6p.  My mother hated that, all the last minute rushing around, hoping that we had everything.  Truthfully, it really was kind of annoying but that’s just how the old man was- cheap.  After he was home we would drive down H.E. Bailey to Lawton.  It was in Lawton that the K-Mart would still be open- he would stop and run around the store chasing the blue light specials, no matter what it was that was just put on sale.  Somehow my mom would drag him out and we would continue the journey on Highway 62.  It was always the darkest here, just south of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.  This is when I would lay with my head against the window, looking out for the flashing red nose of Rudolph, hoping that Santa would remember that we would be back home the next night for him to visit us.

Once we got to Tipton, we would slowly drive through town until we got to Grandma and Grandpa’s house where we would park in the circle drive.  As we got out of the car I would always see the little plastic light up Santa Claus that Grandpa put in the front window.  Don’t know when or where Grandpa got it but as far back as I can remember seeing that Santa meant Christmas was here and that after we were filled up on Grandma’s fried oysters, the fun was going to begin.  Once we were inside, everyone was running around putting the final presents around the tree.  For some reason, my uncle Joe was always last to wrap his gifts, so he would be in a bedroom, shouting for my aunts to come help him.  Present opening would begin around 11p.  My Grandpa and dad had a running joke about dust busters, everyone would laugh at uncle Joe because he bought Hanukkah paper again (he liked it because it was blue, he ignored the Menorah’s on it) and there would always be a wrapping paper ball fight.

This is how every Christmas was for the first 16 years of my life, then the tradition changed.  Grandpa was sick, so they moved to Oklahoma City into apartments.  Some things stayed the same but there was no long drive to Tipton, no looking out for Rudolph and no Santa sitting in the window.  After Grandpa was gone, Christmas changed again- no more fried oysters, now we enjoyed barbeque that my dad picked up from some restaurant.  We were also now in Norman at my aunts’ house and the family was changing- adding more members, first spouses, then kids.  So we had some new traditions, but still kept some of the old.  We were still waiting for uncle Joe to wrap presents, there was still chocolate cake but there was also something missing.  Not just being in Tipton and Grandpa but my mother stopped coming after divorcing my dad, then last year after losing both Grandma and my dad, I knew that Christmas would never be the same.  You just can’t lose two members of the family and act like nothing happened.  Now not only were the traditions mostly gone but so were three members of my family.  I almost didn’t even want to go be with the rest of the Farley’s.  It’s really just not the same at all but I still have my memories of how it used to be.

So what happened to the little plastic light up Santa Claus- after Grandpa died, Grandma sold the house in Tipton and my dad went down to help clean it out.  He stopped at my house with a pickup truck full of stuff that he had taken, wanted to know if there was anything I wanted.  Thrown into the back to the truck was that Santa Claus, I grabbed it with the declaration, “This is mine”.  I cleaned Santa up, now every Christmas I carry on my Grandpa’s tradition and that little plastic light up Santa Claus sits in my front window to remind me that no matter what has changed, it’s Christmas.

 

 

Category:

Christmas in Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Tipton

Comments Off on The Santa in the Window

Tagged with:

Kingfisher in Lights- Back Again

December 9, 2015

Kingfisher christmas lights 6

UPDATE-  Great news for those of us who loved the lights in Kingfisher, they are back on!  A group of Kingfisher residents have gotten together to restore this tradition, now under the name Kingfisher Winter Nights.  I haven’t been yet to see how many of the old displays are still there but hope to make it soon.  Hopefully they have enough visitors to keep the lights on for years to come.

From the time I was a little girl, one of our family Christmas traditions was driving around neighborhoods looking at the Christmas decorations people had put on display.  We did this every year, I remember going around Brookhaven in Norman, when almost every house was lit up.  We were some of the first to drive around Ski Island, before the crowds got too big that the residents shut it down.  Now that I’m older I love the light parks that different cities in the metro have for everyone to drive through.  I’ve been going to Midwest City since the first year the lights were turned on, we’ve gone to Yukon so many times they should at least name a light bulb after me, Chickasha is a long drive but a special treat but one that I really liked the best was the one that was the least popular, Kingfisher in Lights.

Not many knew about the Christmas display that the city put on every year in the park since 1996.  Everything was east of downtown right off of Highway 33 at the Kingfisher Park.  You could park your car, walk to the train station and for a dollar get a ticket to ride the small train through the displays.  It was almost always too cold and the lines really long but it was worth the 20 minute ride.  Most of the time you would get a seat in the enclosed cars but once we got to sit in the coal tender.  Yeah, it was cold but fun.  After the train ride, we would then get in the car and idle through the display, seeing everything from a different angle.  From the car you could talk to the fire-breathing dragon or watch the angels climb into the air.  You could get a better view of the baseball game being played in lights or just count the candy canes along the trails.  There was a cute display of a frog eating a fly and another with firemen putting out a fire.  Sometimes Santa would be out there, handing out candy to all the kids.  After you drove through you could then go back on another road to the the west side of the park and walk across the one hundred year old suspension foot bridge.  The bridge was lit with over 1000 white Christmas lights and you could see the creek very clearly from the deck.  One year while walking across, I saw something swimming in the water twenty feet below, it was a very large beaver that was making his home in the branches piled up along the small concrete dam.  I had seen lots of beavers dead along the side of the road but never out in the water, doing beaver stuff.

Kingfisher christmas lights 2

The fire-breathing dragon, 2010.  (Sorry, didn’t have a good camera at the time.)

Sadly this has all come to an end- in 2014 the lights were canceled because of road construction on Highway 33.  You just couldn’t get to the park.  I could understand that, I was disappointed but was hoping it would be up again this year.  Unfortunately, the display now been closed down for good.  Many of the residents of Kingfisher just didn’t have the time to volunteer and put the lights up.  So now it’s just a memory just as the one year Guthrie had a display (east of Cottonwood Creek, best I can remember is late 1990’s or very early 2000’s) and Duncan’s display (also in the late 1990’s or early 2000’s).  Maybe someday the town will realize they miss it and bring it back.

Christmas lights on bridge in Kingfisher 2001

Uncle John’s Creek bridge in lights, 2001.

Category:

Christmas light displays in Oklahoma, Kingfisher Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma history

Comments Off on Kingfisher in Lights- Back Again

Tagged with:

Washita Battlefield National Historic Site

November 18, 2015

Washita Battlefield 20

Many don’t realize that we have three National Parks in the state of Oklahoma.  All three are beautiful places to visit and each unique.  Unfortunately two are places where great tragedy and loss have occurred.  The Washita Battlefield National Historic Site in one of the oldest and most tragic.  So on a nice fall day a few weeks ago we made a trip to the far western part of the state to visit this historic location.

Near the current town of Cheyenne, Chief Black Kettle and his tribe of Southern Cheyenne had made winter camp on the Washita River in early November 1868.  There had been an uneasy peace with the Cheyenne after the Medicine Lodge Treaty signed in October 1867.  In the summer afterward, that peace was broken when groups of Cheyenne, along with other tribes, started attacking white settlers in Colorado, Texas, and Kansas.  This marked the tribes as “hostile” according to the United States Army.

Washita Battlefield 11

Along the banks of the Washita River, 2015.

With winter coming, many of the tribes settled along the banks of the Washita River (or Lodgepole River, as named by the tribes because of the numerous trees) Black Kettle’s village of around 250 was the western most settlement.  The Army had been stationed near Fort Cobb in western Indian Territory.  General Philip Sheridan decided on a “winter campaign” against the tribes to try and get them to surrender.  So in late November 1868, the general ordered Colonel George Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry to attack Black Kettle’s village.  Early on the morning of November 27, 1868 Custer’s forces converged on the village and in no time had taken control.  Black Kettle and his wife were amongst the first killed.  The exact death toll isn’t known but it is believed that around 50 Cheyenne were killed along with 21 soldiers.  To keep any of the Cheyenne from escaping, Custer also ordered over 700 horses to be slaughtered and dumped in a ravine.  He then took the surviving women and children as prisoners and burned he camp.

Washita Battlefield 5

Site of Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne 1868 winter camp, 2015.

So with this kind of history it’s obviously a sad place to visit.  The location was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966 and in 2007 the state built a new visitor center and museum.  After you walk through the museum, you can go out to the site and walk the 1.5 mile marked trail.  It wasn’t a long walk but it can give you the creeps especially near the reported location of the horse grave.  You can see where the army scouted out the village and get an idea of what the land would have looked like around the time of the massacre.  This is a place to take older kids to help them learn about Oklahoma history and since it is part of the park service they do offer a Junior Ranger badge for completing a booklet geared toward different ages.  I would recommend going but make sure you have some walking shoes on.

Hours: Visitor Center open 7 days a week 8am-5pm except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and January 1st.  Overlook and trail open from dawn to dusk daily.

sunflower

Sunflower on the trail to Black Kettle’s village on the Washita River, 2015.

Category:

National Register of Historic Places, Oklahoma, Oklahoma history

Comments Off on Washita Battlefield National Historic Site

Tagged with: