Route 66: Across 1930s Oklahoma
from The WPA Guide to 1930s Oklahoma, compiled by the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Oklahoma, published by the University Press of Kansas, 1986.
originally published as Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State, 1941
Tour 1
(Baxter Springs, Kans.) -- Tulsa -- Oklahoma City -- El Reno -- Clinton -- Sayre -- (Shamrock, Tex.); US 66.
Kansas Line to Texas Line, 386 m.
Frisco Ry. parallels route between the Kansas Line and Oklahoma City; Rock Island Ry. between Oklahoma City and the Texas Line.
Roadbed concrete-paved throughout.
Good accommodations at short intervals.
Known for many things, Grapes of Wrath families, "Cash and Carry" Pyle's Bunion Derby, its popular local titles, "Main Street of America" and the "Will Rogers Highway of America," US 66 runs the gamut of hot and cold, mountains and prairies, beauty and sordid ugliness.
Its path through Oklahoma has evolved from trails and footpaths worn deep in virgin prairies and blazed through blackjack tangles. Jealousy and rivalry played their part in its growth, for the brash new towns of the young state all wanted to be on the highway which connected the east with the rapidly growing center, Amarillo, Texas, to the west. In 1916, the part of US 66 linking Oklahoma City with Amarillo was improved as a postal highway.
US 66 runs southwestward to the center of the state through mining districts and oil and gas fields, thence westward to the Texas Line through farming and stock country. Part of the route traverses the area visited by Washington Irving in 1832, when the land was a virgin wilderness. He related his adventures in A Tour on the Prairies, published in 1835.
Toward the western end, as the highway rises gradually to higher elevations, the air seems to become clearer, towns are visible at great distances, and tall office buildings loom mirage-like above the level land. The region is aptly called the country of short grass and high plains.
Section a. KANSAS LINE to TULSA, 109.3 m. US 66
Crossing the KANSAS LINE, 0 m., four miles south of Baxter Springs, Kansas (see Kansas Guide ), US 66 passes through a district in which are the greatest lead and zinc mines in the world, a section known to Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri as the Big Business Corner. For about fourteen miles huge man-made mountains of chat (waste rock) border the highway. The lead and zinc deposits were discovered shortly after the Civil War by adventurers searching for gold.
At 0.8 m., under the highway, is part of an abandoned lead mine, which yielded $10,000,000 worth of ore to its first owners. When they ceased operations, they stripped out most of the roof supports and leased the mine site. A slide, caused by the unstable retimbering done by the new owners filled the main shaft with rocks and earth, and the ruined mine was abandoned.
QUAPAW, 4.5 m. (840 alt., 1,054 pop.), was built on land once owned by the Quapaw Indians. The tall prairie grass, abundant in the surrounding country, made the town a logical center for hay-shipping at the turn of the century. Cattle-grazing later became important.
Zinc mining, however, which makes this section a hub of industry today (1941), is at present the commercial mainstay of the town. Mining began in this region as early as 1897. By 1907, ores from the Dark Horse Mine, opened in 1904, were being taken out in paying quantities. After the first World War, when the demand for the two metals had lessened, the fast growth of Quapaw was arrested. However, the modern tree-shaded residential section indicates the prosperity which mining leases have brought to the citizens. A large number of Quapaw Indians live in the town; many of them received immense royalties from their allotments during the boom years of 1917-18.
Near Quapaw an Indian Powwow is held annually on July 4, and, during the second week of August, the Seneca-Cayuga Green Corn Feast and Dances are observed. Visitors are welcome to both.
COMMERCE, 10.8 m. (805 alt., 2,422 pop.), is a mining town surrounded by large piles of slag and chat that mark the mining leases on all sides. Five types of crystal formation and many kinds of ore specimens are displayed for sale on the main street corners. In the town is the abandoned Turkey Fat Mine (R), the first in the area.
Commerce is at the junction with US 69, which unites southward with US 66 for thirty-nine miles (see Tour 8).
At 13.7 m. is a flying school for the training of R.A.F. pilots.
MIAMI, 14.7 m. (800 alt., 8,345 pop.), now a financial center of the important Tri-State mining area, was originally a trading post called Jimtown in the sparsely settled region set aside for a number of small Indian tribes. This post, in the vicinity of the present North Miami, was the home of four farmers named Jim; hence the early name. In 1890, mail for the near-by Quapaw Agency had to be brought from Baxter Springs, Kansas. To facilitate delivery of the agency mail, arrangements were made with Jim Palmer (one of the four Jims) to establish a post office. The name chosen for the new office was Miami, in honor of Palmer's wife, who was of Miami Indian blood. A year later the townsite was platted and the first lots sold.
Miami might have followed the usual development from a trading post in Indian Territory to a small town in a farming community had it not been for the discovery of lead and zinc in 1905. Boom excitement caused the population to increase 141 per cent in a brief period.
The principal industry in the surrounding territory, in addition to mining, is cattle-raising and dairy production; purebred cattle have replaced to a large extent the longhorns which formerly grazed over the reservation.
At the eastern edge of the city, on a forty-acre campus, is the NORTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA JUNIOR COLLEGE, established in 1919 by the state legislature as the Miami School of Mines. Naturally, considering its location in a region of high production of lead and zinc, the school at first emphasized scientific mining instruction. Then, as Miami lost importance as a mining center, it became a junior college, and the name was changed. Regular students number from 250 to 300, with another 200 taking special courses, and there are (1941) fourteen teachers. The school plant includes a large modern ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, a combined GYMNASIUM AND AUDITORIUM, a shop building, and two dormitories, one each for men and women students.
At 24.9 m. is the junction with US 60 (see Tour 4), which unites with US 66-69 for 25.1 miles.
At 28.7 m. is the junction with US 59 (see Tour 15).
AFTON, 29.7 m. (290 alt., 1,261 pop.), a thriving farm center, lies in a level area of rich, black soil near Horse Creek. It is said that it was named for the river Afton made famous by Robert Burns' poem.
At 41.5 m. is the junction with a graveled road.
Left on this road to the GRAND RIVER DAM, 15.5 m., a recently completed (1941), tremendous power project belonging to the people of Oklahoma. The idea of harnessing the water of the Grand River, which is fed by Kansas streams and also by Ozark Mountain springs, was first thought of in 1891. Successive private efforts failed, then the state legislature created the Grand River Dam Authority in 1935. Through a Public Works Administration loan and grant, $22,750,000 was made available for the project; the debt is to be retired by the sale of hydroelectric power.
In August, 1938, construction was started on the 6,565-foot -- the longest multiple arch dam in the world (1941) -- creating a vast inland sea covering fifty-four thousand acres. It is estimated that the project will develop two hundred million kilowatts of power annually to be distributed through private utilities.
Public grounds bordering the thousand-mile shore line are rapidly being developed for recreational purposes, and the lake is being stocked with fish by the State Game and Fish Commission.
VINITA, 45 m. (702 alt., 5,685 pop.), was named by Colonel Elias C. Boudinot, a Cherokee Indian and one of the promoters of the townsite, in honor of Vinnie Ream (1850-1914). Miss Ream, a sculptor, received a Congressional commission to model the life-size statue of Abraham Lincoln which stands in the Capitol at Washington, D.C.
Although there was a small settlement, known as Downingville, here in 1870, Vinita was not founded until 1871 when two railroads were extended to this section. Vinita's early history, like that of many frontier villages, was linked with railroad controversies. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad had planned to make a junction with the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad (now the Frisco) at a point north of Big Cabin (see Tour 8) and refused to stop its trains at Vinita. The Atlantic & Pacific, however, stopped at a crossing near Vinita whenever a train from the other road was due to pass by. Eventually, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas capitulated and a station was built at Vinita.
The annual Will Rogers Memorial Rodeo is held here in the first week in September. Rogers had planned to be present at the first event in 1935, but was killed on August 15 of that year. He attended a secondary school here, but in his writing facetiously referred to Vinita as his "college town."
The EASTERN OKLAHOMA HOSPITAL (visits by appointment) is a state institution for treatment of mental diseases. It was here that a patient, under the pseudonym "Inmate Ward 8," wrote the book, Behind the Door of Delusion (1932).
At 49 m. is the southern junction with US 69 (see Tour 8).
At 50 m. is the southern junction with US 60 (see Tour 4).
CHELSEA, 63.3 m. (723 alt., 1,642 pop.), is well known as a town which was frequented by Will Rogers in his boyhood. Mrs. Sallie McSpadden, his sister, lives here (1941) in a home known as Maplewood. A Boy Scout cabin, for which Rogers contributed the money, is located in a near-by park.
The first oil in Indian Territory was discovered west of Chelsea about 1889 by Edward Byrd, who had secured a lease from the Cherokee Nation. The first shallow well was drilled to a depth of thirty-six feet. Prior to the passing of legislation regarding the leasing of Indian land for drilling, development of the known fields was difficult. But after paying quantities of oil were found in the Tulsa and Red Fork districts in 1901, the United States government started the legislative machinery which led, in 1902, to the complete control of the mineral leasing of Indian-owned land by the Department of the Interior. A shallow field including Chelsea, Alluwe, and Coody's Bluff (to the north) was part of the large area quickly developed.
Since discovery of that first well, oil, as a major industry, has been mostly responsible for the town's growth; formerly cattle-raising and prairie-hay shipping were of prime importance.
BUSHYHEAD, 69.7 m. (602 alt., 50 pop.), is a small farming community named for Dennis W. Bushyhead, at one time (1879-87) chief of the Cherokee Nation.
At 71 m., the highway passes between waste piles from strip coal mines.
CLAREMORE, 82.3 m. (602 alt., 4,134 pop.), is the seat of Rogers County, named in honor of Clem Rogers, father of Will Rogers.
Claremore had its beginning as an Osage Indian town in the early nineteenth century. The name is that of the Osage chief who established the town; it is a variation of the French spelling, Clermont or Clermos. A famous battle between this settlement of Osages and a party of Cherokees took place in 1817 on Claremore Mound, northwest of the city.
The water at Claremore which attracts people seeking its healing power was discovered in 1903 when a test oil well was drilled; instead of oil, the drill struck a large flow of artesian mineral water at a depth of eleven hundred feet. The UNITED STATES INDIAN HOSPITAL, erected in 1928, is supervised by the Department of the Interior.
Claremore has established a BUREAU OF INFORMATION for tourists at the junction of US 66 and State 20. What is said to be the largest individual COLLECTION OF GUNS in the United States, owned by J. M. Davis, is in the Mason Hotel near by.
Extensive publicity has been given to Claremore by many who erroneously believe it to be the birthplace of Will Rogers. Rogers himself was mainly responsible for the error, since, in his own words, he was born "half-way between Claremore and Oologah (see Tour 9A) before there was a town at either place." He referred more to Claremore than Oologah because, he said, "nobody but an Indian could pronounce Oologah."
Oklahoma honored its famous citizen by the erection of the WILL ROGERS MEMORIAL (open 9-5), approximately ten blocks west (R) of US 66. Rogers had owned the original twenty-acre site on the side of the hill for more than twenty-five years, and after his death it was given to the state by his widow. In 1937, the Oklahoma legislature appropriated $200,000 to construct the memorial. The building resembles a low, rambling ranch house of brown stone. The exterior is finished with stone quarried at Catoosa, the interior with silverdale limestone from Kansas, and the floor of the foyer is of split rock from Maine. The Memorial houses four principal galleries -- Indian, Pioneer, Historical, and Educational -- with a fifth gallery reserved exclusively for the display of keepsakes and mementos of the famous humorist. The statue of Rogers, in the main entrance, is a duplicate of the one by Jo Davidson, well-known sculptor, which stands in the national capitol. The memorial building was dedicated on November 4, 1938, the fifty-ninth birth anniversary of the beloved Will. A crypt on the grounds will be the final resting place for the body, which is now (1941) in California.
Adjoining the memorial grounds on the south is the OKLAHOMA MILITARY ACADEMY, established in 1920 by the state. Its graduates are admitted, on appointment, to West Point and Annapolis academies without the usual entrance examinations.
A farmhouse, 93.4 m. on Spunky Creek (L), is on the SITE OF FORT SPUNKY, a station on the Star Mail Route through this vicinity before the coming of the railroad. It is said that a part of the framework and the stone chimney of the farmhouse are remnants of the original building.
CATOOSA, 94.3 m. (618 alt., 405 pop.), was named for "Old Catoos," the rounded hill just west of the town. The name is said to be a derivation of the Cherokee expression, "Gi-tu-zi," meaning "Here live the People of the Light." The story is that "People of the Light" clan formerly met on the summit of the hill.
As a result of treaties made with the Indians after the close of the Civil War, the railroads made slow but inevitable advances west through Indian Territory, each step tapping a new reservoir of wealth in cattle. For a short time in 1882, Catoosa was the terminus of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway before that line was extended to Tulsa. During this period, the town was typically frontier -- the Saturday-night gathering place of roistering cowboys who had driven cattle here to the stockyards.
On the summit (R) of LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN (914 alt.), 95.5 m., the Indians built a cairn, presumably as a trail-marker.
At 96.5 m. is the junction with paved State 33.
Right on State 33 to the junction with Sheridan Road, 8 m.; R. here to TULSA MUNICIPAL AIRPORT (open to visitors), SPARTAN AIR SCHOOL AND FACTORY (not open), and U.S. BOMBING PLANE ASSEMBLY PLANT (not open), 10 m.
This is one of the two important aviation groups in the state. The airport, stretching north and east of the modernistic Administration Building and the hangars for more than one hundred planes, was at one time (1930) the world's busiest airport, outranking in volume of traffic Le Bourget (Paris), Tempelhof (Berlin), and Croydon (London) fields. It is still (1941) an important station for transcontinental and local planes.
The Spartan Air School and Factory have been much expanded as a result of the increased demands of the national defense program. The new Bombing Plane Assembly Plant is laid out on a thousand-acre tract adjoining the airport on the east. There, $15,000,000 is being spent (1941) to provide facilities for turning out and testing fifty giant four-motored bombers per month; the parts are to be fabricated elsewhere. Though provided by the government, the plant is to be operated by one of the large airplane manufacturing companies.
In TULSA, 109.3 m. (700 alt., 142,157 pop.) (see Tulsa), are junctions, with US 64 (see Tour 2), US 169 (see Tour 9A), State 33 (see Tour 2A), and US 75 (see Tour 9), which unites southward with US 66 for fifteen miles.
Section b. TULSA to OKLAHOMA CITY, 120.8 m. US 66
The country southwest of TULSA, 0 m., is mostly rolling prairie, dotted with clumps of scrubby post oak and blackjack trees. Mistletoe, the official state flower, clings abundantly to the trees in winter. In spring, the creek banks and small ravines are crimson with redbud blooms.
RED FORK, 6.9 m., is an industrial suburb of Tulsa; many of the city's manufacturing plants are located here.
The FRANKHOMA POTTERY PLANT (visitors welcome; open work days, 8-4), 12.7 m., manufactures a native clay ware named in honor of its creator, John N. Frank, a former member of the faculty of the University of Oklahoma (see Norman).
SAPULPA, 15.2 m. (712 alt., 12,249 pop.), a cattle-shipping, cotton-marketing, and manufacturing city, is also in the center of oil and gas fields. Sapulpa's largest field was a part of the rich Glenn Pool (L), which extended to within four miles of the town.
About 1850, Jim Sapulpa, a Creek Indian, came to this point from Alabama and commenced farming on Rock Creek, about a mile southeast of the present site of Sapulpa. Later he started a store in his home, hauling his goods by team and pack horses from Fort Smith.
In 1886 the Frisco Railway built to this point, and for a few years Sapulpa was the rail terminus; this laid the foundation upon which the city later became an important cattle-shipping center.
One of the boarding schools maintained by the Creek Indians as a part of their well-knit educational system was established here in October, 1893. The institution was founded for the Euchees, an alien people who had united with the Creeks in their former eastern home and had consequently been moved here with them. The language of the Euchees was so foreign and unintelligible (even to the Creeks) that all communication between the tribes had to be carried on through interpreters. Cut off as they were from their neighbors by this linguistic wall, the Euchees were particularly observant of customs and traditions. With the passage of the Curtis Act by Congress in 1898, the Creeks lost control of their schools to the Department of the Interior, and in 1928 the maintenance was also taken over by the Federal government. Since then, this institution, renamed the EUCHEE INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOL, has offered instruction in the first four grades to Indian boys and girls of all tribes. For higher grades, the boys attended Sapulpa's public schools.
The diversified industries of Sapulpa include a milk-bottle factory, a glass plant which manufactures tableware, a brick and tile plant, and a meat-packing company; all are served by an electric railway connecting with the freight terminals of Tulsa.
PRETTYWATER LAKE (cabins, swimming, fishing), north of Sapulpa, is an attractive vacation resort.
At Sapulpa is the southwest junction with US 75 (see Tour 9).
KELLYVILLE, 24.1 m. (764 alt., 647 pop.), is an agricultural community; there are shallow oil wells in the surrounding district.
Just west of Kellyville are the DANCE GROUNDS of the Creek and Euchee Indians. Celebrations known as "busks" are usually held here in June and July and last four days -- the number "4" being sacred to the Creeks (adm. 25¢ a person; cameras by permission). On the eve of the first day the celebrants purify their bodies with Micco Anija (King of Purgers), the root of the red willow, which produces vomiting. The next day is devoted to Indian ball. An ox or deer skull is nailed to a tall post, a ball of hide is thrown into the air and the players catch it in the cup-shaped ends of their two-foot-long ball-sticks, then fling it at the skull. The women frequently play against the men; they are permitted to throw the ball with their hands while the men must use the sticks. The Hajo-Banga (Crazy Dance) climaxes the busk; the dancers literally "go crazy," no restrictions being placed on their enthusiasm.
BRISTOW, 39.3 m. (818 alt., 6,050 pop.), followed the pattern of a number of towns in eastern Oklahoma in that it began (1897) as a trading post on Creek Land in the Indian Territory.
After Oklahoma Territory was opened, the railroads advanced from the east, building across Indian Territory to reach the new white domain. Scheduled stops for the trains soon grew to settlements and were platted and founded as towns. White civilizations encroached from all sides and each white settlement gave it another firm foothold. The Frisco Railway, with its terminus at Sapulpa for a few years, extended its route, and Bristow, on the line of march, accordingly developed. The town was founded December 23, 1901, and named for J. L. Bristow, then fourth Assistant Postmaster General.
Oil and gas in the area around Bristow dominate its business life, and many large oil companies have plants or offices in or near the city.
STROUD, 56.8 m. (905 alt., 1,917 pop.), was founded in 1896, a few years after this part of Oklahoma Territory was opened to white homesteaders. Since it was only two miles from the Indian Territory and was a large shipping point for cattle from the near-by Creek land, it attracted much illicit liquor trade. Whisky, denied to the Indian by the government, was often hidden in supply wagons of groceries and commodities headed for the Territory; and the consumption of liquor by celebrating cowhands who had driven cattle to the loading pens was no small part of the town's business. With the advent of statehood, however, Stroud's nine flourishing saloons were closed, and the place began to develop as a trading center for an agricultural community. Oil is an additional industry.
Stroud is at the junction with State 99 (see Tour 14).
DAVENPORT, 64.3 m. (840 alt., 975 pop.), was founded in 1903, when a group of Southern Methodists, wishing to establish a community, purchased a farm and laid out a townsite. In 1924, oil was discovered near by, creating the boom sale of eighty additional acres which were platted as town lots. Shortly after this hasty expansion, the big Seminole field (see Tour 5) about thirty-seven miles due south was opened; and several thousand of the newcomers in the area, attracted by greater riches, migrated to Seminole.
Oil activity is still important, however, with two large gasoline plants operating and with the opening of new fields in adjacent areas.
CHANDLER, 71.2 m. (865 alt., 2,738 pop.), seat of Lincoln County, was founded in September, 1891. The town was platted on a series of low hills and named for George Chandler, of Kansas, Assistant Secretary of the Interior under President Harrison (1889-93).
Every building in Chandler (with the exception of the Presbyterian Church) was razed and fourteen persons were killed in the terrible cyclone of 1897. When the small group of citizens who had taken shelter in the church emerged, they found that tall trees had been hurled through the air, and houses, barns, and animals had been blown across the town.
Today, Chandler is known as one of the largest pecan-shipping points in the nation. A new pecan-shelling plant, to take care of the fast-growing industry, is being erected (1941). Among the town's other industries is a honey-packing plant.
A moving picture history of the town was begun in 1904 by Bennie Kent, now a veteran newsreel cameraman; the picture is brought up to date each year.
At 104.1 m. is the junction with US 77 (see Tour 10), which unites southward with US 66 for 21.6 miles.
A large ROADSIDE PARK (picnic facilities), 107.7 m., nestles (L) in an unspoiled setting of low, rough hills and sharp ravines shaded by blackjack oak trees.
EDMOND, 107.5 m. (1,200 alt., 4,002 pop.), was first established as a watering and coaling station when the Santa Fe Railway was extended into the Territory in 1887, and was named for one of the railway officials. It served as a shipping point for cattle and as a concentration point for supplies bound for trading posts on the Kickapoo and Iowa reservations. In the Run of April 22, 1889, the townsite was homesteaded.
Pioneer foresight is apparent in the beauty of the landscaping and natural setting of the town; houses are set on deep lawns where there are tall trees and many flowers. Edmond is a trading center for the surrounding farms, has several small factories, and a towering grain elevator, and is rapidly developing a near-by oil field.
On the east side of town stands CENTRAL STATE COLLEGE, a coeducational school with an enrollment (1941) of 858 students. It was established here as the Territorial Normal School in October, 1891. NORTH TOWER, the oldest of the nine buildings on the campus, was originally built of brick made near the college, but when the structure was enlarged it was covered with native red sandstone. The LIBRARY contains approximately thirty thousand volumes. In the rear of the buildings are tennis courts and a stadium. Stately old elms and some twenty other kinds of trees cover the landscaped campus.
At 111 m. is MEMORIAL PARK (L) (see Tour 10).
OKLAHOMA CITY, 120.8 m. (1,194 alt., 204,424 pop.) (see Oklahoma City), is at the southern junction with US 77 (see Tour 10); US 62 (see Tour 3) and the eastern junction with US 270 (see Tour 5).
from The WPA Guide to 1930s Oklahoma, compiled by the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Oklahoma, published by the University Press of Kansas, 1986.
originally published as Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State, 1941
Tour 1
(Baxter Springs, Kans.) -- Tulsa -- Oklahoma City -- El Reno -- Clinton -- Sayre -- (Shamrock, Tex.); US 66.
Kansas Line to Texas Line, 386 m.
Frisco Ry. parallels route between the Kansas Line and Oklahoma City; Rock Island Ry. between Oklahoma City and the Texas Line.
Roadbed concrete-paved throughout.
Good accommodations at short intervals.
Known for many things, Grapes of Wrath families, "Cash and Carry" Pyle's Bunion Derby, its popular local titles, "Main Street of America" and the "Will Rogers Highway of America," US 66 runs the gamut of hot and cold, mountains and prairies, beauty and sordid ugliness.
Its path through Oklahoma has evolved from trails and footpaths worn deep in virgin prairies and blazed through blackjack tangles. Jealousy and rivalry played their part in its growth, for the brash new towns of the young state all wanted to be on the highway which connected the east with the rapidly growing center, Amarillo, Texas, to the west. In 1916, the part of US 66 linking Oklahoma City with Amarillo was improved as a postal highway.
US 66 runs southwestward to the center of the state through mining districts and oil and gas fields, thence westward to the Texas Line through farming and stock country. Part of the route traverses the area visited by Washington Irving in 1832, when the land was a virgin wilderness. He related his adventures in A Tour on the Prairies, published in 1835.
Toward the western end, as the highway rises gradually to higher elevations, the air seems to become clearer, towns are visible at great distances, and tall office buildings loom mirage-like above the level land. The region is aptly called the country of short grass and high plains.
Section a. KANSAS LINE to TULSA, 109.3 m. US 66
Crossing the KANSAS LINE, 0 m., four miles south of Baxter Springs, Kansas (see Kansas Guide ), US 66 passes through a district in which are the greatest lead and zinc mines in the world, a section known to Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri as the Big Business Corner. For about fourteen miles huge man-made mountains of chat (waste rock) border the highway. The lead and zinc deposits were discovered shortly after the Civil War by adventurers searching for gold.
At 0.8 m., under the highway, is part of an abandoned lead mine, which yielded $10,000,000 worth of ore to its first owners. When they ceased operations, they stripped out most of the roof supports and leased the mine site. A slide, caused by the unstable retimbering done by the new owners filled the main shaft with rocks and earth, and the ruined mine was abandoned.
QUAPAW, 4.5 m. (840 alt., 1,054 pop.), was built on land once owned by the Quapaw Indians. The tall prairie grass, abundant in the surrounding country, made the town a logical center for hay-shipping at the turn of the century. Cattle-grazing later became important.
Zinc mining, however, which makes this section a hub of industry today (1941), is at present the commercial mainstay of the town. Mining began in this region as early as 1897. By 1907, ores from the Dark Horse Mine, opened in 1904, were being taken out in paying quantities. After the first World War, when the demand for the two metals had lessened, the fast growth of Quapaw was arrested. However, the modern tree-shaded residential section indicates the prosperity which mining leases have brought to the citizens. A large number of Quapaw Indians live in the town; many of them received immense royalties from their allotments during the boom years of 1917-18.
Near Quapaw an Indian Powwow is held annually on July 4, and, during the second week of August, the Seneca-Cayuga Green Corn Feast and Dances are observed. Visitors are welcome to both.
COMMERCE, 10.8 m. (805 alt., 2,422 pop.), is a mining town surrounded by large piles of slag and chat that mark the mining leases on all sides. Five types of crystal formation and many kinds of ore specimens are displayed for sale on the main street corners. In the town is the abandoned Turkey Fat Mine (R), the first in the area.
Commerce is at the junction with US 69, which unites southward with US 66 for thirty-nine miles (see Tour 8).
At 13.7 m. is a flying school for the training of R.A.F. pilots.
MIAMI, 14.7 m. (800 alt., 8,345 pop.), now a financial center of the important Tri-State mining area, was originally a trading post called Jimtown in the sparsely settled region set aside for a number of small Indian tribes. This post, in the vicinity of the present North Miami, was the home of four farmers named Jim; hence the early name. In 1890, mail for the near-by Quapaw Agency had to be brought from Baxter Springs, Kansas. To facilitate delivery of the agency mail, arrangements were made with Jim Palmer (one of the four Jims) to establish a post office. The name chosen for the new office was Miami, in honor of Palmer's wife, who was of Miami Indian blood. A year later the townsite was platted and the first lots sold.
Miami might have followed the usual development from a trading post in Indian Territory to a small town in a farming community had it not been for the discovery of lead and zinc in 1905. Boom excitement caused the population to increase 141 per cent in a brief period.
The principal industry in the surrounding territory, in addition to mining, is cattle-raising and dairy production; purebred cattle have replaced to a large extent the longhorns which formerly grazed over the reservation.
At the eastern edge of the city, on a forty-acre campus, is the NORTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA JUNIOR COLLEGE, established in 1919 by the state legislature as the Miami School of Mines. Naturally, considering its location in a region of high production of lead and zinc, the school at first emphasized scientific mining instruction. Then, as Miami lost importance as a mining center, it became a junior college, and the name was changed. Regular students number from 250 to 300, with another 200 taking special courses, and there are (1941) fourteen teachers. The school plant includes a large modern ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, a combined GYMNASIUM AND AUDITORIUM, a shop building, and two dormitories, one each for men and women students.
At 24.9 m. is the junction with US 60 (see Tour 4), which unites with US 66-69 for 25.1 miles.
At 28.7 m. is the junction with US 59 (see Tour 15).
AFTON, 29.7 m. (290 alt., 1,261 pop.), a thriving farm center, lies in a level area of rich, black soil near Horse Creek. It is said that it was named for the river Afton made famous by Robert Burns' poem.
At 41.5 m. is the junction with a graveled road.
Left on this road to the GRAND RIVER DAM, 15.5 m., a recently completed (1941), tremendous power project belonging to the people of Oklahoma. The idea of harnessing the water of the Grand River, which is fed by Kansas streams and also by Ozark Mountain springs, was first thought of in 1891. Successive private efforts failed, then the state legislature created the Grand River Dam Authority in 1935. Through a Public Works Administration loan and grant, $22,750,000 was made available for the project; the debt is to be retired by the sale of hydroelectric power.
In August, 1938, construction was started on the 6,565-foot -- the longest multiple arch dam in the world (1941) -- creating a vast inland sea covering fifty-four thousand acres. It is estimated that the project will develop two hundred million kilowatts of power annually to be distributed through private utilities.
Public grounds bordering the thousand-mile shore line are rapidly being developed for recreational purposes, and the lake is being stocked with fish by the State Game and Fish Commission.
VINITA, 45 m. (702 alt., 5,685 pop.), was named by Colonel Elias C. Boudinot, a Cherokee Indian and one of the promoters of the townsite, in honor of Vinnie Ream (1850-1914). Miss Ream, a sculptor, received a Congressional commission to model the life-size statue of Abraham Lincoln which stands in the Capitol at Washington, D.C.
Although there was a small settlement, known as Downingville, here in 1870, Vinita was not founded until 1871 when two railroads were extended to this section. Vinita's early history, like that of many frontier villages, was linked with railroad controversies. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad had planned to make a junction with the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad (now the Frisco) at a point north of Big Cabin (see Tour 8) and refused to stop its trains at Vinita. The Atlantic & Pacific, however, stopped at a crossing near Vinita whenever a train from the other road was due to pass by. Eventually, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas capitulated and a station was built at Vinita.
The annual Will Rogers Memorial Rodeo is held here in the first week in September. Rogers had planned to be present at the first event in 1935, but was killed on August 15 of that year. He attended a secondary school here, but in his writing facetiously referred to Vinita as his "college town."
The EASTERN OKLAHOMA HOSPITAL (visits by appointment) is a state institution for treatment of mental diseases. It was here that a patient, under the pseudonym "Inmate Ward 8," wrote the book, Behind the Door of Delusion (1932).
At 49 m. is the southern junction with US 69 (see Tour 8).
At 50 m. is the southern junction with US 60 (see Tour 4).
CHELSEA, 63.3 m. (723 alt., 1,642 pop.), is well known as a town which was frequented by Will Rogers in his boyhood. Mrs. Sallie McSpadden, his sister, lives here (1941) in a home known as Maplewood. A Boy Scout cabin, for which Rogers contributed the money, is located in a near-by park.
The first oil in Indian Territory was discovered west of Chelsea about 1889 by Edward Byrd, who had secured a lease from the Cherokee Nation. The first shallow well was drilled to a depth of thirty-six feet. Prior to the passing of legislation regarding the leasing of Indian land for drilling, development of the known fields was difficult. But after paying quantities of oil were found in the Tulsa and Red Fork districts in 1901, the United States government started the legislative machinery which led, in 1902, to the complete control of the mineral leasing of Indian-owned land by the Department of the Interior. A shallow field including Chelsea, Alluwe, and Coody's Bluff (to the north) was part of the large area quickly developed.
Since discovery of that first well, oil, as a major industry, has been mostly responsible for the town's growth; formerly cattle-raising and prairie-hay shipping were of prime importance.
BUSHYHEAD, 69.7 m. (602 alt., 50 pop.), is a small farming community named for Dennis W. Bushyhead, at one time (1879-87) chief of the Cherokee Nation.
At 71 m., the highway passes between waste piles from strip coal mines.
CLAREMORE, 82.3 m. (602 alt., 4,134 pop.), is the seat of Rogers County, named in honor of Clem Rogers, father of Will Rogers.
Claremore had its beginning as an Osage Indian town in the early nineteenth century. The name is that of the Osage chief who established the town; it is a variation of the French spelling, Clermont or Clermos. A famous battle between this settlement of Osages and a party of Cherokees took place in 1817 on Claremore Mound, northwest of the city.
The water at Claremore which attracts people seeking its healing power was discovered in 1903 when a test oil well was drilled; instead of oil, the drill struck a large flow of artesian mineral water at a depth of eleven hundred feet. The UNITED STATES INDIAN HOSPITAL, erected in 1928, is supervised by the Department of the Interior.
Claremore has established a BUREAU OF INFORMATION for tourists at the junction of US 66 and State 20. What is said to be the largest individual COLLECTION OF GUNS in the United States, owned by J. M. Davis, is in the Mason Hotel near by.
Extensive publicity has been given to Claremore by many who erroneously believe it to be the birthplace of Will Rogers. Rogers himself was mainly responsible for the error, since, in his own words, he was born "half-way between Claremore and Oologah (see Tour 9A) before there was a town at either place." He referred more to Claremore than Oologah because, he said, "nobody but an Indian could pronounce Oologah."
Oklahoma honored its famous citizen by the erection of the WILL ROGERS MEMORIAL (open 9-5), approximately ten blocks west (R) of US 66. Rogers had owned the original twenty-acre site on the side of the hill for more than twenty-five years, and after his death it was given to the state by his widow. In 1937, the Oklahoma legislature appropriated $200,000 to construct the memorial. The building resembles a low, rambling ranch house of brown stone. The exterior is finished with stone quarried at Catoosa, the interior with silverdale limestone from Kansas, and the floor of the foyer is of split rock from Maine. The Memorial houses four principal galleries -- Indian, Pioneer, Historical, and Educational -- with a fifth gallery reserved exclusively for the display of keepsakes and mementos of the famous humorist. The statue of Rogers, in the main entrance, is a duplicate of the one by Jo Davidson, well-known sculptor, which stands in the national capitol. The memorial building was dedicated on November 4, 1938, the fifty-ninth birth anniversary of the beloved Will. A crypt on the grounds will be the final resting place for the body, which is now (1941) in California.
Adjoining the memorial grounds on the south is the OKLAHOMA MILITARY ACADEMY, established in 1920 by the state. Its graduates are admitted, on appointment, to West Point and Annapolis academies without the usual entrance examinations.
A farmhouse, 93.4 m. on Spunky Creek (L), is on the SITE OF FORT SPUNKY, a station on the Star Mail Route through this vicinity before the coming of the railroad. It is said that a part of the framework and the stone chimney of the farmhouse are remnants of the original building.
CATOOSA, 94.3 m. (618 alt., 405 pop.), was named for "Old Catoos," the rounded hill just west of the town. The name is said to be a derivation of the Cherokee expression, "Gi-tu-zi," meaning "Here live the People of the Light." The story is that "People of the Light" clan formerly met on the summit of the hill.
As a result of treaties made with the Indians after the close of the Civil War, the railroads made slow but inevitable advances west through Indian Territory, each step tapping a new reservoir of wealth in cattle. For a short time in 1882, Catoosa was the terminus of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway before that line was extended to Tulsa. During this period, the town was typically frontier -- the Saturday-night gathering place of roistering cowboys who had driven cattle here to the stockyards.
On the summit (R) of LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN (914 alt.), 95.5 m., the Indians built a cairn, presumably as a trail-marker.
At 96.5 m. is the junction with paved State 33.
Right on State 33 to the junction with Sheridan Road, 8 m.; R. here to TULSA MUNICIPAL AIRPORT (open to visitors), SPARTAN AIR SCHOOL AND FACTORY (not open), and U.S. BOMBING PLANE ASSEMBLY PLANT (not open), 10 m.
This is one of the two important aviation groups in the state. The airport, stretching north and east of the modernistic Administration Building and the hangars for more than one hundred planes, was at one time (1930) the world's busiest airport, outranking in volume of traffic Le Bourget (Paris), Tempelhof (Berlin), and Croydon (London) fields. It is still (1941) an important station for transcontinental and local planes.
The Spartan Air School and Factory have been much expanded as a result of the increased demands of the national defense program. The new Bombing Plane Assembly Plant is laid out on a thousand-acre tract adjoining the airport on the east. There, $15,000,000 is being spent (1941) to provide facilities for turning out and testing fifty giant four-motored bombers per month; the parts are to be fabricated elsewhere. Though provided by the government, the plant is to be operated by one of the large airplane manufacturing companies.
In TULSA, 109.3 m. (700 alt., 142,157 pop.) (see Tulsa), are junctions, with US 64 (see Tour 2), US 169 (see Tour 9A), State 33 (see Tour 2A), and US 75 (see Tour 9), which unites southward with US 66 for fifteen miles.
Section b. TULSA to OKLAHOMA CITY, 120.8 m. US 66
The country southwest of TULSA, 0 m., is mostly rolling prairie, dotted with clumps of scrubby post oak and blackjack trees. Mistletoe, the official state flower, clings abundantly to the trees in winter. In spring, the creek banks and small ravines are crimson with redbud blooms.
RED FORK, 6.9 m., is an industrial suburb of Tulsa; many of the city's manufacturing plants are located here.
The FRANKHOMA POTTERY PLANT (visitors welcome; open work days, 8-4), 12.7 m., manufactures a native clay ware named in honor of its creator, John N. Frank, a former member of the faculty of the University of Oklahoma (see Norman).
SAPULPA, 15.2 m. (712 alt., 12,249 pop.), a cattle-shipping, cotton-marketing, and manufacturing city, is also in the center of oil and gas fields. Sapulpa's largest field was a part of the rich Glenn Pool (L), which extended to within four miles of the town.
About 1850, Jim Sapulpa, a Creek Indian, came to this point from Alabama and commenced farming on Rock Creek, about a mile southeast of the present site of Sapulpa. Later he started a store in his home, hauling his goods by team and pack horses from Fort Smith.
In 1886 the Frisco Railway built to this point, and for a few years Sapulpa was the rail terminus; this laid the foundation upon which the city later became an important cattle-shipping center.
One of the boarding schools maintained by the Creek Indians as a part of their well-knit educational system was established here in October, 1893. The institution was founded for the Euchees, an alien people who had united with the Creeks in their former eastern home and had consequently been moved here with them. The language of the Euchees was so foreign and unintelligible (even to the Creeks) that all communication between the tribes had to be carried on through interpreters. Cut off as they were from their neighbors by this linguistic wall, the Euchees were particularly observant of customs and traditions. With the passage of the Curtis Act by Congress in 1898, the Creeks lost control of their schools to the Department of the Interior, and in 1928 the maintenance was also taken over by the Federal government. Since then, this institution, renamed the EUCHEE INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOL, has offered instruction in the first four grades to Indian boys and girls of all tribes. For higher grades, the boys attended Sapulpa's public schools.
The diversified industries of Sapulpa include a milk-bottle factory, a glass plant which manufactures tableware, a brick and tile plant, and a meat-packing company; all are served by an electric railway connecting with the freight terminals of Tulsa.
PRETTYWATER LAKE (cabins, swimming, fishing), north of Sapulpa, is an attractive vacation resort.
At Sapulpa is the southwest junction with US 75 (see Tour 9).
KELLYVILLE, 24.1 m. (764 alt., 647 pop.), is an agricultural community; there are shallow oil wells in the surrounding district.
Just west of Kellyville are the DANCE GROUNDS of the Creek and Euchee Indians. Celebrations known as "busks" are usually held here in June and July and last four days -- the number "4" being sacred to the Creeks (adm. 25¢ a person; cameras by permission). On the eve of the first day the celebrants purify their bodies with Micco Anija (King of Purgers), the root of the red willow, which produces vomiting. The next day is devoted to Indian ball. An ox or deer skull is nailed to a tall post, a ball of hide is thrown into the air and the players catch it in the cup-shaped ends of their two-foot-long ball-sticks, then fling it at the skull. The women frequently play against the men; they are permitted to throw the ball with their hands while the men must use the sticks. The Hajo-Banga (Crazy Dance) climaxes the busk; the dancers literally "go crazy," no restrictions being placed on their enthusiasm.
BRISTOW, 39.3 m. (818 alt., 6,050 pop.), followed the pattern of a number of towns in eastern Oklahoma in that it began (1897) as a trading post on Creek Land in the Indian Territory.
After Oklahoma Territory was opened, the railroads advanced from the east, building across Indian Territory to reach the new white domain. Scheduled stops for the trains soon grew to settlements and were platted and founded as towns. White civilizations encroached from all sides and each white settlement gave it another firm foothold. The Frisco Railway, with its terminus at Sapulpa for a few years, extended its route, and Bristow, on the line of march, accordingly developed. The town was founded December 23, 1901, and named for J. L. Bristow, then fourth Assistant Postmaster General.
Oil and gas in the area around Bristow dominate its business life, and many large oil companies have plants or offices in or near the city.
STROUD, 56.8 m. (905 alt., 1,917 pop.), was founded in 1896, a few years after this part of Oklahoma Territory was opened to white homesteaders. Since it was only two miles from the Indian Territory and was a large shipping point for cattle from the near-by Creek land, it attracted much illicit liquor trade. Whisky, denied to the Indian by the government, was often hidden in supply wagons of groceries and commodities headed for the Territory; and the consumption of liquor by celebrating cowhands who had driven cattle to the loading pens was no small part of the town's business. With the advent of statehood, however, Stroud's nine flourishing saloons were closed, and the place began to develop as a trading center for an agricultural community. Oil is an additional industry.
Stroud is at the junction with State 99 (see Tour 14).
DAVENPORT, 64.3 m. (840 alt., 975 pop.), was founded in 1903, when a group of Southern Methodists, wishing to establish a community, purchased a farm and laid out a townsite. In 1924, oil was discovered near by, creating the boom sale of eighty additional acres which were platted as town lots. Shortly after this hasty expansion, the big Seminole field (see Tour 5) about thirty-seven miles due south was opened; and several thousand of the newcomers in the area, attracted by greater riches, migrated to Seminole.
Oil activity is still important, however, with two large gasoline plants operating and with the opening of new fields in adjacent areas.
CHANDLER, 71.2 m. (865 alt., 2,738 pop.), seat of Lincoln County, was founded in September, 1891. The town was platted on a series of low hills and named for George Chandler, of Kansas, Assistant Secretary of the Interior under President Harrison (1889-93).
Every building in Chandler (with the exception of the Presbyterian Church) was razed and fourteen persons were killed in the terrible cyclone of 1897. When the small group of citizens who had taken shelter in the church emerged, they found that tall trees had been hurled through the air, and houses, barns, and animals had been blown across the town.
Today, Chandler is known as one of the largest pecan-shipping points in the nation. A new pecan-shelling plant, to take care of the fast-growing industry, is being erected (1941). Among the town's other industries is a honey-packing plant.
A moving picture history of the town was begun in 1904 by Bennie Kent, now a veteran newsreel cameraman; the picture is brought up to date each year.
At 104.1 m. is the junction with US 77 (see Tour 10), which unites southward with US 66 for 21.6 miles.
A large ROADSIDE PARK (picnic facilities), 107.7 m., nestles (L) in an unspoiled setting of low, rough hills and sharp ravines shaded by blackjack oak trees.
EDMOND, 107.5 m. (1,200 alt., 4,002 pop.), was first established as a watering and coaling station when the Santa Fe Railway was extended into the Territory in 1887, and was named for one of the railway officials. It served as a shipping point for cattle and as a concentration point for supplies bound for trading posts on the Kickapoo and Iowa reservations. In the Run of April 22, 1889, the townsite was homesteaded.
Pioneer foresight is apparent in the beauty of the landscaping and natural setting of the town; houses are set on deep lawns where there are tall trees and many flowers. Edmond is a trading center for the surrounding farms, has several small factories, and a towering grain elevator, and is rapidly developing a near-by oil field.
On the east side of town stands CENTRAL STATE COLLEGE, a coeducational school with an enrollment (1941) of 858 students. It was established here as the Territorial Normal School in October, 1891. NORTH TOWER, the oldest of the nine buildings on the campus, was originally built of brick made near the college, but when the structure was enlarged it was covered with native red sandstone. The LIBRARY contains approximately thirty thousand volumes. In the rear of the buildings are tennis courts and a stadium. Stately old elms and some twenty other kinds of trees cover the landscaped campus.
At 111 m. is MEMORIAL PARK (L) (see Tour 10).
OKLAHOMA CITY, 120.8 m. (1,194 alt., 204,424 pop.) (see Oklahoma City), is at the southern junction with US 77 (see Tour 10); US 62 (see Tour 3) and the eastern junction with US 270 (see Tour 5).
Section c. OKLAHOMA CITY to TEXAS LINE, 155.9 m. US 66
From Oklahoma City to the Texas Line US 66 passes through a farming region, and though some of it lies within the much publicized "dust bowl," it is in general reasonably productive. With the planting of trees (which has been greatly stimulated by experiences in the shelter-belt zones) and better farm practices, wind erosion and sun-scorching of crops will be greatly lessened.
West of OKLAHOMA CITY, 0 m., US 66 and US 270 (see Tour 5) are united for 33.3 miles.
At the western edge of Oklahoma City is the junction with May Avenue, a paved street.
Right on May Avenue to WILEY POST AIRPORT, 3 m., named for the noted flier who was killed in the crash in Alaska in which Will Rogers died. Here, in 1941, was being carried out a program of pilot training under contract with the Civil Aeronautics Authority. Some three hundred students were being trained by sixteen instructors. No passenger service is offered at this airport.
At 4.6 m. is a large, gray brick building (R), which until recently was known as the HOME OF THE POOR PROPHET. It was built in 1910 by a real estate company which offered it to the state for use as a capitol before the present building was constructed. The offer was rejected, and a private school leased it. In 1913, Eugene Arnett, an insurance broker, bought the property and named it the Home of the Poor Prophet, placing the cement letters of the title on the front lawn. Arnett lived here and attempted to carry out sociological experiments and reforms; he was considered eccentric and many tales grew up about his queer doings. The building is now (1941) dilapidated and abandoned.
BETHANY, 6.9 m. (1,212 alt., 2,590 pop.), is primarily the home of members of the Nazarene religious sect. Under the terms of the town's charter there are no theaters, billiard halls, or beauty parlors; and the sale of tobacco and intoxicants is forbidden. Even billboards advertising these articles are banned.
The BETHANY-PENIEL COLLEGE, with an average enrollment of four hundred and a faculty of nineteen, was founded in Oklahoma City in 1906 and moved to its ten-acre campus at Bethany in 1909. It was given its present name in 1920 when the Peniel College of Peniel, Texas, was incorporated with the original institution. The school specializes in training for the Nazarene ministry; it is, however, nonsectarian and has high school, junior college, and college courses.
Adjoining Bethany on the northwest is the new (1941) Oklahoma City MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. When the army took over the former Oklahoma City field to enlarge it for a bombardment training school and air base (see Tour 3), this site was acquired and developed into one of the most modern airports in the Middle West. It is used by the Oklahoma-owned Braniff Airways, Mid-Continent Airlines, and the coast to coast American Airlines. The new Airport represents an expenditure of approximately $1,500,000, of which the Federal government contributed some 75 per cent.
At 9.1 m., a steel bridge spans the northern end of LAKE OVERHOLSER (fishing, boating, picnicking). This seventeen-hundred-acre lake with a ten-mile shoreline was created by the damming of the North Canadian River in 1916 to furnish a water supply for Oklahoma City, and named for Ed Overholser, mayor of the city (1915-18).
For about six miles along the east side of the present lake and the Canadian River is the SITE OF CAMP ALICE, established in 1883 by David L. Payne, a Civil War veteran and former member of the Kansas legislature. Twice Payne and his land-hungry band of Boomers had attempted to settle in the territory that is now the state of Oklahoma. United States troops had halted the former invasions, but in April, 1883, Payne, with a caravan of 117 wagons and 516 men and women reached this spot, setting up Camp Alice, also known as Payne's Trading Post. Here the group surveyed and platted a townsite and also laid out the site of a capitol for the proposed state which they were advocating and attempting to create. The colonists staked out farms and began plowing in order to put in crops. In the following month, however, a company of United States infantry destroyed the camp and forced the colonists to return to Kansas. In 1884, Payne led another group to a site near where Blackwell now stands, but again the colonists were removed. Payne died in Wellington, Kansas, November 28, 1884.
Lake Overholser has been approved (1941) as a seaplane base. A float, shelter house, and necessary markers have been provided, and the lake became the first officially designated seaplane base in Oklahoma.
YUKON, 13.9 m. (1,298 alt., 1,660 pop.), an agricultural and milling center, was laid out in 1891 by the Spencer brothers, who owned the 160-acre site. Frisco, a small town of one thousand population, had been established near by; but when a railroad was built through Yukon, most of Frisco's people moved there. The large flour mills on the eastern edge of Yukon dominate the town's commercial life as well as its buildings.
At 14.7 m. is a junction with a graded dirt road.
Left on this road, 1 m., to a SPRING, once a favorite stopping place for travelers following the old Chisholm Trail (see Tour 11).
At 16.9 m. is the junction with a paved road.
Left on this road to the new (1941) privately operated AIR TRAINING SCHOOL, 1 m., where, under a contract with the United States government, men are given primary instruction in flying.
EL RENO, 26.9 m. (1,363 alt., 10,078 pop.), the seat of Canadian County, situated not far from the south bank of the North Canadian River, was founded when the Rock Island railroad was routed to the site two months after the Run of April 22, 1889. The town derives its name from Fort Reno near by (see below).
Reno City, with a population of fifteen hundred, was located on the north bank of the North Canadian immediately after the Run and, consequently, expected to have the railway connection. The Rock Island, however, changed its plans when the Reno Cityans refused to pay the high bonus asked for the line. As a result, the residents decided to move to the new town, loading their household goods -- even their buildings -- on wagons and crude rollers, and crossing the shallow, unbridged river. A three-story hotel building, meeting difficulties, was stranded on the river bed but was operated continuously until its removal to more stable ground.
In July, 1901, El Reno's population increased to approximately 145,000 -- literally within a day -- when the Kiowa-Apache-Comanche reservation was opened by lottery to white settlers, affording the last opportunity to obtain free land in the Territory. Living accomodations were completely inadequate for this sudden influx, but, fortunately, most of those seeking homesteads left as soon as the drawing was completed.
Pioneer Day, celebrated on April 22, is an annual holiday in El Reno. Residents dress in 89'er costumes, place historic relics on display, and hold a parade and rodeo.
Marketing, flour milling, shipping, and transportation are the chief industries. The main lines of the Rock Island Railway meet here, where the railroad maintains district offices and division shops. On the division office grounds stands a geological oddity, a petrified tree stump eight feet high, which grew in a swamp some millions of years ago. It was discovered in 1914 by a Rock Island coal-mining crew while sinking a shaft at Alderson, Oklahoma.
El Reno is at the junction with US 81 (see Tour 11).
At 28.8 m. is the UNITED STATES SOUTHWESTERN REFORMATORY (visitors not admitted). This institution (L), built at a cost exceeding $1,000,000 in 1934, houses first offenders against Federal law, short-term prisoners, and convicts under thirty-five years of age. The buildings are erected around a rectangular court in the western section of a thousand-acre tract formerly a part of the Fort Reno Military Reservation.
At 29.1 m. is a junction with a graveled road.
Right on this road, 1.8 m., to FORT RENO, the United States Army's largest remount station. The post was originally established to protect the old Darlington Indian Agency on the opposite bank of the North Canadian (see Tour 11) from Cheyenne Indian forays. During a Cheyenne uprising in 1874, the Darlington agent sent for help to the Fort Sill Military Reservation (see Tour 3A) and to the fort at Leavenworth, Kansas. The Fort Sill troops met hostile Indians near the Wichita Agency at Anadarko and could not reach the agency, but the soldiers from Leavenworth arrived. Fort Reno was established by these troops in July of the same year and named for Union General Jesse L. Reno, who had been killed at the Battle of Antietam in the Civil War. The Indian insurrectionists were finally subdued in March, 1875. Permanent fort buildings were then erected and by 1880 there were three hundred cavalrymen at the garrison to oversee the fifteen hundred Indians camped near by. For the next five years, the troops were kept busy expelling Boomers from the surrounding region; and, in 1889, they guarded the boundary of the new land to be opened to settlement. Military supervision was necessary in order to keep the Sooners from jumping the line ahead of the starting gun. With the coming of the white settlers and the allotment of Indian lands, need for troops at this point decreased and the fort was abandoned in February, 1908; but, in April of the same year, it was re-established as a remount station, where horses are broken and trained for other military camps.
At 36.5 m. on the main route is the western junction with US 270 (see Tour 5).
At 52.3 m. is a junction with paved US 281-State 8.
Left here is HINTON, 8 m. (1,650 alt., 842 pop.), where in the first week in August a colorful rodeo is held at KIWANIS PARK (free swimming and fishing), 8.4 m. This park is reached by a road blasted out of steep sandstone walls which sometimes rise as high as one hundred feet. A dam forms a lake eight feet deep. Overlooking one bank is a massive rock towering 125 feet above the water. Large springs gush from crevices in the rocks, and trees stud the canyon slopes.
Access to KICKAPOO CANYON (S.E. of the park) and WATER CANYON (N.E. of the park) is difficult, except in a few places, because of the steep walls. Near the divide between those two canyons, small creeks have cut valleys fifty to one hundred feet wide and several miles long, with level floors about two hundred feet wide. Growing here are more than twenty varieties of trees and many shrubs, herbs, ferns, mosses, lichens, and fungi.
WEATHERFORD, 71.5 m. (1,644 m., 2,504 pop.), is a well-ordered trade center for the surrounding agricultural population. It was founded in 1893 and named for William J. Weatherford, a United States marshal who was stationed here during Territorial days.
In the city is the SOUTHWESTERN STATE COLLEGE OF DIVERSIFIED OCCUPATIONS, founded in 1901 and known until 1939 as Southwestern State Teachers' College. Situated on the brow of a hill (R), it has ten buildings and a large amphitheater on a sixty-five-acre campus. The change of name was brought about by a change in the educational policy of the institution. While the training of teachers is still important, emphasis is placed on the study of trades ranging from mechanics to beauty culture.
Indian powwows are frequently held near Weatherford; a few miles south of town is a "stomp ground" where Indians gather in tribal costume to stage ceremonial dances. Annually, in September, the dancers perform at an Indian fair in the town.
At 85.7 m. is the CLINTON INDIAN HOSPITAL (R), an institution opened by the Federal government in 1933 to care for the sick among the Indian population. Most of the thirty beds are occupied by tuberculosis patients. The three one-story red-brick buildings stand on an eight-acre tract. The Indians were at first hesitant to accept the benefits of medical care, but now generally welcome the aid offered here.
CLINTON, 86.6 m. (1,564 alt., 6,736 pop.), is built on a level plain within a bend of the Washita River. Upon the opening of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation in 1892, the land where Clinton now stands was passed up by many who considered it not worth staking out. The town was founded in 1903, when the Frisco Railway built to the site and named for Federal Judge Clinton F. Irwin.
Clinton has grown to be an important shipping center for the surrounding cattle lands and wheat fields. One of the nine camps established by the Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture in an effort to check erosion is located here. Because of its high elevation and the dryness of the atmosphere, Clinton has two large private hospitals, caring mostly for tuberculosis patients; the WESTERN OKLAHOMA CHARITY HOSPITAL, at the southern city limits, is maintained by the state.
Clinton is at the junction with US 183 (see Tour 12).
The STATE TUBERCULOSIS SANITORIUM (visitors by appointment), 87.1 m., also state-owned and controlled, was first established at Supply in 1917 but was moved to Clinton in 1919. The large hospital (L) consists of fifty-three buildings on an 810-acre tract of ground. Those who are able to do so pay for their care. Negroes are admitted to the wards, since there is no segregated Negro unit.
At 96.8 m. is a junction with a graded dirt road.
Right on this road, 0.5 m., is the CLINTON DAM AND WATERWORKS, which forms a seven-hundred-acre clear-water lake. Around the lake Clinton maintains a landscaped public park (picnicking and fishing; free).
Westward, the route crosses over tree-bordered creeks into a section where barren red hills rise suddenly above almost level prairies.
On the eastern edge of CANUTE, 108.1 m. (1,910 alt., 374 pop.), is the ROMAN CATHOLIC CEMETERY (R), in which is a replica of the Crucifixion Scene. Surmounting a low hill is a bronze figure of Christ on the cross, with the two Marys kneeling below. In the side of the hill, a glass-enclosed sepulcher holds the waxen image of Christ. The scene was planned by Father Peter Paul Schaeffer, of the Holy Parish; the sanctuary will be the final resting place of Father Schaeffer and Frank Flies, whose financial aid made its erection possible.
Canute has only a small residential and business section, but sheet-metal cotton sheds and gin houses, spread out on both sides of the highway, indicate the town's main industry, cotton ginning. The town was founded in 1902 by an independent townsite company.
West of Canute, the land is rolling and hilly, the soil deep red, and the farms have a prosperous appearance.
At 115.3 m. is a Y-junction with State 34, a graveled road. In the center of the plot bounded by the Y is a granite marker, designating 34 as the Chisholm Trail (see Tour 11). Actually, however, State 34 marks the old Western or Texas Cattle Trail, a later route.
Right on State 34 is HAMMON, 14.6 m. (1,736 alt., 705 pop.), a farming settlement. Right from Hammon on a dirt road to a CHEYENNE INDIAN SETTLEMENT, 16.2 m. The group of boarded-up tents and shacks, clustered under the trees, is the old camp of Whiteshield, former chief of the Southern Cheyennes. In 1871, Whiteshield went to Washington, D.C., as a member of the delegation representing the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. There, from President Grant, he received a treaty medal, symbolizing peace, agriculture, education, and Christianity. Upon his return, Whiteshield began to live in accordance with the treaty symbols and became an earnest advocate of civilization, schools, and missions. A white and blue cottage, bordered by a picket fence, northeast of the Cheyenne settlement, was Whiteshield's home in later life and is now occupied by his relatives.
ELK CITY, 116 m. (1,926 alt., 5,021 pop.), was originally named Busch, in honor of Adolphus Busch, of St. Louis. Because of the similarity of the name to that of another post office, it was renamed Elk City; Elk Creek skirts the town limits.
One of Oklahoma's first co-operative medical ventures is the COMMUNITY HOSPITAL, located at Elk City, sponsored by the Farmers' Co-operative Hospital Association. Doctor M. Shadid, a Syrian-born physician, was instrumental in establishing the institution in which each stockholder -- for $25 a year -- receives all necessary medical treatment for himself and his immediate family.
SAYRE, 132.3 m. (1,810 alt., 3,037 pop.), seat of Beckham County, was named for Robert H. Sayre, a stockholder in the railroad extended to the city at its founding, September 14, 1901. The North Fork of the Red River flows along the southern outskirts of the town, its sandy banks affording a natural beach for swimming. The area has been developed into a public park.
Sayre is chiefly dependent on the surrounding rich gas fields and serves as a market for broomcorn. It has an oil refinery and a large plant in which 420,000 burners convert natural gas into carbon black. A weekly community sale of livestock and farm utilities is held here.
Jess Willard, former world's champion prize fighter, once ran a rooming house in Sayre. Another famous son, Giuseppi Bentonelli (Joseph Benton), Metropolitan Opera tenor, was brought there as an infant in 1900.
Sayre is at the junction with US 283 (see Tour 13).
Westward for a few miles, there are weed-covered sand dunes and patches of gnarled dwarf trees; then the highway descends into a valley where there is more vegetation, although most of the land is uncultivated.
Prior to 1896, Texas claimed the land south of the North Fork of the Red River, crossed at 133.8 m.; in that year the United States Supreme Court ruled that the southern fork of the Red River was the northern boundary line of Texas, and the area between the forks was added to Oklahoma Territory.
ERICK, 148.2 m. (2,080 alt., 1,591 pop.), was incorporated in 1902 and named for Beech Erick, a member of the townsite company. US 66 passes between two long rows of widely spaced houses and bisects the eight-block business section. The town is surrounded by rich farming lands, cattle ranches, and a natural gas field.
Southwest of Erick is an old SALT SPRINGS, nature's gift to early-day cattlemen. As the beeves were driven north from the Texas ranches each spring, many herders made this a stopping-place so that the cattle might lick the salt. The fresh-water springs which flow through COX'S CAVE near by made the spot an ideal camping place in that early period.
Between Erick and the Texas Line, the prairie stretches in shelving levels to the west. Most of the land is under cultivation. The windmill-like devices on the roofs of many houses are wind generators, a popular means of rural electrification.
TEXOLA, 155.3 m. (2,150 alt., 337 pop.), on the Texas-Oklahoma border, combines syllables from the two state names to form its own. The business section still retains the wooden sidewalk awnings -- supported at the curb by iron or cement posts -- that were in general use during pioneer days.
At 155.9 m. US 66 crosses the TEXAS LINE, fourteen miles east of Shamrock, Texas (see Texas Guide ).
THIS TEXT IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
From Oklahoma City to the Texas Line US 66 passes through a farming region, and though some of it lies within the much publicized "dust bowl," it is in general reasonably productive. With the planting of trees (which has been greatly stimulated by experiences in the shelter-belt zones) and better farm practices, wind erosion and sun-scorching of crops will be greatly lessened.
West of OKLAHOMA CITY, 0 m., US 66 and US 270 (see Tour 5) are united for 33.3 miles.
At the western edge of Oklahoma City is the junction with May Avenue, a paved street.
Right on May Avenue to WILEY POST AIRPORT, 3 m., named for the noted flier who was killed in the crash in Alaska in which Will Rogers died. Here, in 1941, was being carried out a program of pilot training under contract with the Civil Aeronautics Authority. Some three hundred students were being trained by sixteen instructors. No passenger service is offered at this airport.
At 4.6 m. is a large, gray brick building (R), which until recently was known as the HOME OF THE POOR PROPHET. It was built in 1910 by a real estate company which offered it to the state for use as a capitol before the present building was constructed. The offer was rejected, and a private school leased it. In 1913, Eugene Arnett, an insurance broker, bought the property and named it the Home of the Poor Prophet, placing the cement letters of the title on the front lawn. Arnett lived here and attempted to carry out sociological experiments and reforms; he was considered eccentric and many tales grew up about his queer doings. The building is now (1941) dilapidated and abandoned.
BETHANY, 6.9 m. (1,212 alt., 2,590 pop.), is primarily the home of members of the Nazarene religious sect. Under the terms of the town's charter there are no theaters, billiard halls, or beauty parlors; and the sale of tobacco and intoxicants is forbidden. Even billboards advertising these articles are banned.
The BETHANY-PENIEL COLLEGE, with an average enrollment of four hundred and a faculty of nineteen, was founded in Oklahoma City in 1906 and moved to its ten-acre campus at Bethany in 1909. It was given its present name in 1920 when the Peniel College of Peniel, Texas, was incorporated with the original institution. The school specializes in training for the Nazarene ministry; it is, however, nonsectarian and has high school, junior college, and college courses.
Adjoining Bethany on the northwest is the new (1941) Oklahoma City MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. When the army took over the former Oklahoma City field to enlarge it for a bombardment training school and air base (see Tour 3), this site was acquired and developed into one of the most modern airports in the Middle West. It is used by the Oklahoma-owned Braniff Airways, Mid-Continent Airlines, and the coast to coast American Airlines. The new Airport represents an expenditure of approximately $1,500,000, of which the Federal government contributed some 75 per cent.
At 9.1 m., a steel bridge spans the northern end of LAKE OVERHOLSER (fishing, boating, picnicking). This seventeen-hundred-acre lake with a ten-mile shoreline was created by the damming of the North Canadian River in 1916 to furnish a water supply for Oklahoma City, and named for Ed Overholser, mayor of the city (1915-18).
For about six miles along the east side of the present lake and the Canadian River is the SITE OF CAMP ALICE, established in 1883 by David L. Payne, a Civil War veteran and former member of the Kansas legislature. Twice Payne and his land-hungry band of Boomers had attempted to settle in the territory that is now the state of Oklahoma. United States troops had halted the former invasions, but in April, 1883, Payne, with a caravan of 117 wagons and 516 men and women reached this spot, setting up Camp Alice, also known as Payne's Trading Post. Here the group surveyed and platted a townsite and also laid out the site of a capitol for the proposed state which they were advocating and attempting to create. The colonists staked out farms and began plowing in order to put in crops. In the following month, however, a company of United States infantry destroyed the camp and forced the colonists to return to Kansas. In 1884, Payne led another group to a site near where Blackwell now stands, but again the colonists were removed. Payne died in Wellington, Kansas, November 28, 1884.
Lake Overholser has been approved (1941) as a seaplane base. A float, shelter house, and necessary markers have been provided, and the lake became the first officially designated seaplane base in Oklahoma.
YUKON, 13.9 m. (1,298 alt., 1,660 pop.), an agricultural and milling center, was laid out in 1891 by the Spencer brothers, who owned the 160-acre site. Frisco, a small town of one thousand population, had been established near by; but when a railroad was built through Yukon, most of Frisco's people moved there. The large flour mills on the eastern edge of Yukon dominate the town's commercial life as well as its buildings.
At 14.7 m. is a junction with a graded dirt road.
Left on this road, 1 m., to a SPRING, once a favorite stopping place for travelers following the old Chisholm Trail (see Tour 11).
At 16.9 m. is the junction with a paved road.
Left on this road to the new (1941) privately operated AIR TRAINING SCHOOL, 1 m., where, under a contract with the United States government, men are given primary instruction in flying.
EL RENO, 26.9 m. (1,363 alt., 10,078 pop.), the seat of Canadian County, situated not far from the south bank of the North Canadian River, was founded when the Rock Island railroad was routed to the site two months after the Run of April 22, 1889. The town derives its name from Fort Reno near by (see below).
Reno City, with a population of fifteen hundred, was located on the north bank of the North Canadian immediately after the Run and, consequently, expected to have the railway connection. The Rock Island, however, changed its plans when the Reno Cityans refused to pay the high bonus asked for the line. As a result, the residents decided to move to the new town, loading their household goods -- even their buildings -- on wagons and crude rollers, and crossing the shallow, unbridged river. A three-story hotel building, meeting difficulties, was stranded on the river bed but was operated continuously until its removal to more stable ground.
In July, 1901, El Reno's population increased to approximately 145,000 -- literally within a day -- when the Kiowa-Apache-Comanche reservation was opened by lottery to white settlers, affording the last opportunity to obtain free land in the Territory. Living accomodations were completely inadequate for this sudden influx, but, fortunately, most of those seeking homesteads left as soon as the drawing was completed.
Pioneer Day, celebrated on April 22, is an annual holiday in El Reno. Residents dress in 89'er costumes, place historic relics on display, and hold a parade and rodeo.
Marketing, flour milling, shipping, and transportation are the chief industries. The main lines of the Rock Island Railway meet here, where the railroad maintains district offices and division shops. On the division office grounds stands a geological oddity, a petrified tree stump eight feet high, which grew in a swamp some millions of years ago. It was discovered in 1914 by a Rock Island coal-mining crew while sinking a shaft at Alderson, Oklahoma.
El Reno is at the junction with US 81 (see Tour 11).
At 28.8 m. is the UNITED STATES SOUTHWESTERN REFORMATORY (visitors not admitted). This institution (L), built at a cost exceeding $1,000,000 in 1934, houses first offenders against Federal law, short-term prisoners, and convicts under thirty-five years of age. The buildings are erected around a rectangular court in the western section of a thousand-acre tract formerly a part of the Fort Reno Military Reservation.
At 29.1 m. is a junction with a graveled road.
Right on this road, 1.8 m., to FORT RENO, the United States Army's largest remount station. The post was originally established to protect the old Darlington Indian Agency on the opposite bank of the North Canadian (see Tour 11) from Cheyenne Indian forays. During a Cheyenne uprising in 1874, the Darlington agent sent for help to the Fort Sill Military Reservation (see Tour 3A) and to the fort at Leavenworth, Kansas. The Fort Sill troops met hostile Indians near the Wichita Agency at Anadarko and could not reach the agency, but the soldiers from Leavenworth arrived. Fort Reno was established by these troops in July of the same year and named for Union General Jesse L. Reno, who had been killed at the Battle of Antietam in the Civil War. The Indian insurrectionists were finally subdued in March, 1875. Permanent fort buildings were then erected and by 1880 there were three hundred cavalrymen at the garrison to oversee the fifteen hundred Indians camped near by. For the next five years, the troops were kept busy expelling Boomers from the surrounding region; and, in 1889, they guarded the boundary of the new land to be opened to settlement. Military supervision was necessary in order to keep the Sooners from jumping the line ahead of the starting gun. With the coming of the white settlers and the allotment of Indian lands, need for troops at this point decreased and the fort was abandoned in February, 1908; but, in April of the same year, it was re-established as a remount station, where horses are broken and trained for other military camps.
At 36.5 m. on the main route is the western junction with US 270 (see Tour 5).
At 52.3 m. is a junction with paved US 281-State 8.
Left here is HINTON, 8 m. (1,650 alt., 842 pop.), where in the first week in August a colorful rodeo is held at KIWANIS PARK (free swimming and fishing), 8.4 m. This park is reached by a road blasted out of steep sandstone walls which sometimes rise as high as one hundred feet. A dam forms a lake eight feet deep. Overlooking one bank is a massive rock towering 125 feet above the water. Large springs gush from crevices in the rocks, and trees stud the canyon slopes.
Access to KICKAPOO CANYON (S.E. of the park) and WATER CANYON (N.E. of the park) is difficult, except in a few places, because of the steep walls. Near the divide between those two canyons, small creeks have cut valleys fifty to one hundred feet wide and several miles long, with level floors about two hundred feet wide. Growing here are more than twenty varieties of trees and many shrubs, herbs, ferns, mosses, lichens, and fungi.
WEATHERFORD, 71.5 m. (1,644 m., 2,504 pop.), is a well-ordered trade center for the surrounding agricultural population. It was founded in 1893 and named for William J. Weatherford, a United States marshal who was stationed here during Territorial days.
In the city is the SOUTHWESTERN STATE COLLEGE OF DIVERSIFIED OCCUPATIONS, founded in 1901 and known until 1939 as Southwestern State Teachers' College. Situated on the brow of a hill (R), it has ten buildings and a large amphitheater on a sixty-five-acre campus. The change of name was brought about by a change in the educational policy of the institution. While the training of teachers is still important, emphasis is placed on the study of trades ranging from mechanics to beauty culture.
Indian powwows are frequently held near Weatherford; a few miles south of town is a "stomp ground" where Indians gather in tribal costume to stage ceremonial dances. Annually, in September, the dancers perform at an Indian fair in the town.
At 85.7 m. is the CLINTON INDIAN HOSPITAL (R), an institution opened by the Federal government in 1933 to care for the sick among the Indian population. Most of the thirty beds are occupied by tuberculosis patients. The three one-story red-brick buildings stand on an eight-acre tract. The Indians were at first hesitant to accept the benefits of medical care, but now generally welcome the aid offered here.
CLINTON, 86.6 m. (1,564 alt., 6,736 pop.), is built on a level plain within a bend of the Washita River. Upon the opening of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation in 1892, the land where Clinton now stands was passed up by many who considered it not worth staking out. The town was founded in 1903, when the Frisco Railway built to the site and named for Federal Judge Clinton F. Irwin.
Clinton has grown to be an important shipping center for the surrounding cattle lands and wheat fields. One of the nine camps established by the Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture in an effort to check erosion is located here. Because of its high elevation and the dryness of the atmosphere, Clinton has two large private hospitals, caring mostly for tuberculosis patients; the WESTERN OKLAHOMA CHARITY HOSPITAL, at the southern city limits, is maintained by the state.
Clinton is at the junction with US 183 (see Tour 12).
The STATE TUBERCULOSIS SANITORIUM (visitors by appointment), 87.1 m., also state-owned and controlled, was first established at Supply in 1917 but was moved to Clinton in 1919. The large hospital (L) consists of fifty-three buildings on an 810-acre tract of ground. Those who are able to do so pay for their care. Negroes are admitted to the wards, since there is no segregated Negro unit.
At 96.8 m. is a junction with a graded dirt road.
Right on this road, 0.5 m., is the CLINTON DAM AND WATERWORKS, which forms a seven-hundred-acre clear-water lake. Around the lake Clinton maintains a landscaped public park (picnicking and fishing; free).
Westward, the route crosses over tree-bordered creeks into a section where barren red hills rise suddenly above almost level prairies.
On the eastern edge of CANUTE, 108.1 m. (1,910 alt., 374 pop.), is the ROMAN CATHOLIC CEMETERY (R), in which is a replica of the Crucifixion Scene. Surmounting a low hill is a bronze figure of Christ on the cross, with the two Marys kneeling below. In the side of the hill, a glass-enclosed sepulcher holds the waxen image of Christ. The scene was planned by Father Peter Paul Schaeffer, of the Holy Parish; the sanctuary will be the final resting place of Father Schaeffer and Frank Flies, whose financial aid made its erection possible.
Canute has only a small residential and business section, but sheet-metal cotton sheds and gin houses, spread out on both sides of the highway, indicate the town's main industry, cotton ginning. The town was founded in 1902 by an independent townsite company.
West of Canute, the land is rolling and hilly, the soil deep red, and the farms have a prosperous appearance.
At 115.3 m. is a Y-junction with State 34, a graveled road. In the center of the plot bounded by the Y is a granite marker, designating 34 as the Chisholm Trail (see Tour 11). Actually, however, State 34 marks the old Western or Texas Cattle Trail, a later route.
Right on State 34 is HAMMON, 14.6 m. (1,736 alt., 705 pop.), a farming settlement. Right from Hammon on a dirt road to a CHEYENNE INDIAN SETTLEMENT, 16.2 m. The group of boarded-up tents and shacks, clustered under the trees, is the old camp of Whiteshield, former chief of the Southern Cheyennes. In 1871, Whiteshield went to Washington, D.C., as a member of the delegation representing the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. There, from President Grant, he received a treaty medal, symbolizing peace, agriculture, education, and Christianity. Upon his return, Whiteshield began to live in accordance with the treaty symbols and became an earnest advocate of civilization, schools, and missions. A white and blue cottage, bordered by a picket fence, northeast of the Cheyenne settlement, was Whiteshield's home in later life and is now occupied by his relatives.
ELK CITY, 116 m. (1,926 alt., 5,021 pop.), was originally named Busch, in honor of Adolphus Busch, of St. Louis. Because of the similarity of the name to that of another post office, it was renamed Elk City; Elk Creek skirts the town limits.
One of Oklahoma's first co-operative medical ventures is the COMMUNITY HOSPITAL, located at Elk City, sponsored by the Farmers' Co-operative Hospital Association. Doctor M. Shadid, a Syrian-born physician, was instrumental in establishing the institution in which each stockholder -- for $25 a year -- receives all necessary medical treatment for himself and his immediate family.
SAYRE, 132.3 m. (1,810 alt., 3,037 pop.), seat of Beckham County, was named for Robert H. Sayre, a stockholder in the railroad extended to the city at its founding, September 14, 1901. The North Fork of the Red River flows along the southern outskirts of the town, its sandy banks affording a natural beach for swimming. The area has been developed into a public park.
Sayre is chiefly dependent on the surrounding rich gas fields and serves as a market for broomcorn. It has an oil refinery and a large plant in which 420,000 burners convert natural gas into carbon black. A weekly community sale of livestock and farm utilities is held here.
Jess Willard, former world's champion prize fighter, once ran a rooming house in Sayre. Another famous son, Giuseppi Bentonelli (Joseph Benton), Metropolitan Opera tenor, was brought there as an infant in 1900.
Sayre is at the junction with US 283 (see Tour 13).
Westward for a few miles, there are weed-covered sand dunes and patches of gnarled dwarf trees; then the highway descends into a valley where there is more vegetation, although most of the land is uncultivated.
Prior to 1896, Texas claimed the land south of the North Fork of the Red River, crossed at 133.8 m.; in that year the United States Supreme Court ruled that the southern fork of the Red River was the northern boundary line of Texas, and the area between the forks was added to Oklahoma Territory.
ERICK, 148.2 m. (2,080 alt., 1,591 pop.), was incorporated in 1902 and named for Beech Erick, a member of the townsite company. US 66 passes between two long rows of widely spaced houses and bisects the eight-block business section. The town is surrounded by rich farming lands, cattle ranches, and a natural gas field.
Southwest of Erick is an old SALT SPRINGS, nature's gift to early-day cattlemen. As the beeves were driven north from the Texas ranches each spring, many herders made this a stopping-place so that the cattle might lick the salt. The fresh-water springs which flow through COX'S CAVE near by made the spot an ideal camping place in that early period.
Between Erick and the Texas Line, the prairie stretches in shelving levels to the west. Most of the land is under cultivation. The windmill-like devices on the roofs of many houses are wind generators, a popular means of rural electrification.
TEXOLA, 155.3 m. (2,150 alt., 337 pop.), on the Texas-Oklahoma border, combines syllables from the two state names to form its own. The business section still retains the wooden sidewalk awnings -- supported at the curb by iron or cement posts -- that were in general use during pioneer days.
At 155.9 m. US 66 crosses the TEXAS LINE, fourteen miles east of Shamrock, Texas (see Texas Guide ).
THIS TEXT IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN