imagery and adventure
Bill and I have been blessed to visit Utah several times over the past few years and as I was thinking about my next trip — hiking in the area around Kanab, Utah later this week — I remembered this story from our 2009 journey across the country to California, “The Trail of the Ancients.” It was published in James Pratt’s Adventure Rider Magazine.
Click here: Trail of the Ancients
West of Oklahoma City — way out past Hinton and nearly to Hydro — the casual observer driving along Interstate 40 might catch out of the corner of his eye some mounds to the south upon the prairie. They’re easy to miss, since such physical features are unexpected amid the flatness, and one’s eyes are not easily drawn to the landscape in that region. It was, of course, the contrast these buttes created that made them remarkable to travelers of the prairie in the days when overland navigation depended heavily on landmarks.The first recorded observation of the mounds came in 1849 from Lieutenant James H. Simpson of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. Simpson was part of Captain Randolph B. Marcy’s military escort for a party of gold seekers traveling to California. Simpson notes in his journal on May 23, 1849:
“Proceeding on about a mile (from camp), some hills of singular shape make their appearance, for the first time, bearing north 70 degrees west; several have very much the appearance of immense Indian lodges.”
The most famous of these mounds, which became an often-noted landmark for westbound travelers, is Rock Mary. Simpson describes his discovery of Rock Mary as follows: “Nearing the first of these (mounds) . . . , and it appearing more oddly shaped than any of the others, I started off alone to ascend it — reaching it just in time to scare up a wild turkey; and tying my horse to a black-jack tree at its base, I scrambled up to its summit. The novel character of the hill; its contorted appearance; its sudden emergence from the plain around it; my having reached its pinnacle; it being an object of interest to beholders in the distance; — all this had its complex influence upon me, and I felt correspondingly elated.”
In the excitement of discovering and ascending the mound, Simpson unfurled an American flag at the summit and named the rock in honor of a young woman traveling with the company, Mary Conway. Captain Marcy did not remark on Rock Mary specifically in his journal but describes the first sighting of the buttes as follows:
“Continuing on this ‘Divide’ for thirteen miles we passed several high mounds of a very soft red sandstone, rising up almost perpendicularly out of the open table land, and can be seen for a long distance before reaching them. At the base of the southern mound, following an old Indian trail, it led us down into a deep ravine, where there is a fine spring of cool water, with wood and grass.”
These hills came to be called the Natural Mounds, described by botanist and artist H.B. Mollhausen, who traveled with the Whipple Expedition surveying a possible railroad route to the Pacific in 1853, as “a group of bold steep hills in the thenceforward treeless plain.” He described them further as “a chain of conical hills, lying separate, but scattered in a direction from north-west to south-east; they are all about equal in height, namely, about eighty feet, and covered with a horizontal stratum of red sandstone.”
Today, the mounds are no less visible, and are easily located as one travels west from Hinton, Oklahoma. Rock Mary is located a few miles west of Hinton on private property southeast of the intersection of Caddo County Roads N2560 and E1070. See Google map here.
Although the site is not open to the public, Rock Mary can be viewed from the county road. I had the opportunity to visit it with Art Peters, curator of the Hinton Historical Museum, as part of my research for “The Great Golden Road,” my story about the California Road in the September/October 2016 issue of Oklahoma Today (oklahomatoday.com). See below a photo of Peters in front of Rock Mary, viewing the butte from the west, and a photo of me at the summit of Rock Mary, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A few months later, my son Mark Fields and I went with Peters on a tour of several other mounds in the same area. We visited Lone Mound, Crown Mound, and Chimney Mound. Crown Mound is the tallest of the “Natural Mounds” and part of the cluster called “Steen’s Buttes,” northwest of Rock Mary. These were so named in the fall of 1858 by Lieutenant Edward F. Beale during a survey for construction of a wagon road from Fort Smith, Arkansas to the Colorado River. They are named for Enoch Steen, who commanded the military escort accompanying Beale’s expedition. This is the grouping of hills most easily viewed from Interstate 40.
Chimney Mound was memorialized by Mollhausen in the illustration below. Its appearance is much the same today.
On another excursion, traveling alone to explore and photograph the mounds, I was able to locate Ghost Mound, pictured below. My resource for this excursion was Art Peters’ book, “Legends of the Mounds,” the cover of which is also pictured below. The book contains history, legends, and a map of the mounds, and is available at the Hinton Historical Museum, 801 S. Broadway in Hinton, or by contacting the museum at (405) 542-3181 or hhmuseum@hintonet.net.
See the following for additional information:
“Rock Mary Report,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 38 (Summer 1960).
The latest issue of Oklahoma Today (September/October 2016) features my article, “The Great Golden Way,” which tells the story of a trail that crossed Oklahoma in the 1800s, the California Road. It began in Fort Smith, Arkansas and carried fortune-seekers to Santa Fe, New Mexico on their way to the gold fields of California, starting in 1849. Wagons traveled more than 400 miles across Indian Territory in the course of the journey, following the south bank of the Canadian River (or the “South Canadian River,” as we know it locally . . . the “North Canadian River” is actually the northern branch of the Canadian).
Go to OklahomaToday.com to subscribe or pick up a copy on newsstands now.
Remnants of the trail are still evident today and Art Peters, curator of the Hinton Historical Museum, has spent the last decade retracing the wagon road through western Oklahoma. In the past few years he has also been placing markers on the trail.
Over time his exploration has yielded numerous artifacts. Even after the Gold Rush, the road was used for many years, probably until around 1918. Wagon hardware, buttons, tableware, and many other metal objects have turned up in Peters’ excavations and they are on display at the museum, located at 801 S. Broadway in Hinton, just north of the entrance to Red Rock Canyon. (Red Rock Canyon is the only place on public property in Oklahoma where a California Road wagon rut is evident and can be easily visited.)
Four of the artifacts Peters has recently found are pictured below, with some details written by Peters about each one. (Artifact photos by Art Peters.) See these and much more at the museum. For more information, call (405) 542-3181 or go to Hinton Historical Museum
Peters: The padlock is from the 1901 – 1915 time period and the flat-style key it took was a very common thing at that time. I’ve found old trunk locks before that took the same small-style key. I found the lock several yards to the south of a trail campsite near Leedey. I don’t know if the word Patrol means anything more than a brand name or if these locks were meant to lock strong boxes on stage coaches, but I think it was very possible. Movies always show a massive railroad lock, as big as the palm of a hand, being shot off by the outlaws, but in reality they used anything that was handy and would get the job done.
Peters: The fork is from the same campsite as the padlock. Two of the tongs are still holding the shape of the imprint from where a wagon wheel ran over it. The third tong and handle were broken off from the force of being run over. On the reverse side of the handle there are two small hooks, located at the very outer edge, resembling snake fangs, that show us this fork was originally attached to a ring and was part of a “camp set.” But it is uncertain if the “camp set” would have been something the average wagon traveler could have purchased at a trading post or in Fort Smith before heading out, or if it could have come from a military outfit leading the wagon trains or passing through on a different expedition. In the same campsite I also found a long thin flat piece of metal shard I think could have been a cheaply made knife blade body, missing its base and point, but can’t be sure it was part of the same set.
Peters: The cast-iron stove foot was found in a wagon train campsite west of Hinton. I recently found more cast-iron stove plate shards, which equal about one-third of a complete stove-top, top-plate, and part of the top surface rim, which indicates it was a cook stove and not a pot-belly stove. When the wagons were entering this campsite they had just pulled a hill leading them here, and it was during that uphill pull that the wagons would have begun moaning, groaning and creaking under the stress of the pull. This is also the time when wagon brackets and horse harness would break, and men would come to realize their wagons were too overloaded to carry on. Therefore items such as cast-iron stoves and grandfather clocks would have been unloaded to ease the stress the animals and wagons were undergoing. When I think about this old stove foot and the complete stove it came from, I can imagine a conversation between a man and wife on the trail who has just had a horse harness or wagon part break as they approached the top of this hill. If the man is polite to his wife it would go something like this. “Honey you know I love you, but we just can’t take the stove any farther.” Then seeing the broken parts for herself, she would obviously agree to discard it.
Peters: One item I had not given much thought to until a friend mentioned it, is a badly oxidized flat gear about the size of an old silver dollar. It is bent on one edge and has a small pointer on one flat side. I took it to a clock repair shop and the lady there, before I told her about my work, said it was from a mid to late 1800s grandfather clock and the small pointer was the striker that releases the chimes every half hour. It fits the time period perfectly and those old clocks were heavy and if broken in route, it may have been discarded in the camp.
It’s a good week for publications — my story on the Ozark Highlands Trail, “Waiting for Daylight,” was published in TrailGroove’s online magazine (Click here for the TrailGroove web site) a few days ago and then yesterday OutdoorX4 magazine released the digital version of Issue 16 with my story on trekking in Iceland, “Land of Fire and Ice.” AND, one of my photos is featured in OutdoorX4’s “Great Escape” section. Nice! The print version of OutdoorX4 will be available at Barnes and Noble soon, for those who don’t yet subscribe. (Subscribe at OutdoorX4.com.) See both these pieces at my Publications page: https://susandragoo.com/publications/
And, coming out very soon in Oklahoma Today magazine is another article I’m very excited about. Subscribe today at OklahomaToday.com and stay tuned!
Just posted on my web site a large group of recent adventure, history, and travel articles I’ve had published (some as co-author with Bill) in Oklahoma Today, OutdoorX4, ADVMoto, RoadRunner, TrailGroove, Expedition Portal and others. Check them out at this link:
https://susandragoo.com/publications/
See Expedition Portal for my story on exploring New Mexico’s Mills Canyon:
http://expeditionportal.com/and-they-said-it-couldnt-be-done/
It’s pristine, easy to access, and historically important. It’s also remote and seems to be relatively unknown, and the fact that few people know about it is probably a good thing. The grounds of Sacred Heart Abbey, near Konawa, Oklahoma are a place of peace and calm and mystery. It’s a quiet place to walk, to explore, to meditate or pray, to ponder the work that went on here so many years ago, or to ponder nothing at all.
I visited there recently for the third time, on a photo expedition with my son Mark, something that is becoming a Mother’s Day tradition for us. The photos here are from that visit. We noted with amusement that the sign at the front gate says, “No Trespassing After Dark.” We assume it’s okay to trespass before dark.
There were two people leaving as we entered. Other than that, no one was around and we were free to wander over the several-acre site and take photos with our vintage Nikkormat film cameras loaded with Kodak Tri-X film.
From the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture:
A Roman Catholic institution founded May 13, 1877, by Father Isidore Robot, O.S.B., Sacred Heart Mission (later Sacred Heart Abbey) and its successor institution, St. Gregory’s Abbey and University, constitute Oklahoma’s oldest educational center in continuous operation. Robot, a Benedictine monk, had arrived in the Indian Territory in October 1875 with a lay brother companion. The two had left their home monastery in France when the Laic Laws threatened to close many Catholic institutions.
Other members of the French community soon joined Robot, and the Potawatomi Nation offered a section of land four miles north of the Canadian River in the southeast corner of what is now Pottawatomie County. By 1880 Robot had built a monastery, schools for Indian boys and girls, a technical institute, and a seminary. In 1892 he constructed a large church. Four years later Sacred Heart was raised to abbatial rank, and the monks elected their first abbot.
Fire destroyed the large complex of frame buildings during the night of January 14–15, 1901. The facilities were quickly rebuilt, but by that time the monks had realized that the nearest railroad would not be close enough to make a secondary school viable on the site. They therefore established St. Gregory’s College at Shawnee, thirty-five miles north. The new school opened in September 1915.
As other monastic operations thereafter gravitated to Shawnee, Sacred Heart reverted to priory status, with the seat of the abbey transferred to St. Gregory’s in 1929. Sacred Heart Priory closed in 1955 and most of its buildings were razed.
– James D. White, “Sacred Heart Abbey,” Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, http://www.okhistory.org (accessed June 01, 2016).
More on Father Robot: Father Isidore Robot
For information on the location of Sacred Heart Abbey, see this link: Sacred Heart Abbey
Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs zoom
Plenty o’ air and plenty o’ room
(From “Oklahoma,” by Rodgers and Hammerstein)
Western Oklahoma. For some, the words conjure up in the mind’s eye a straight ribbon of four-lane through flat, featureless land. But they are the ones who have never been close to it. For them, and maybe for you, it’s like “fly-over” country for coastal inhabitants . . . they are passing through on the way to somewhere else.
I know, because that was me. A native of northeastern Oklahoma, I found the western landscape a stark and barren contrast to the hardwood forests and verdant hills of my youth. It never occurred to me that a different kind of beauty waited there. I too had rushed through on the interstate, always headed to other places, just waiting for the miles to go by. But then there was FreeWheel.
FreeWheel is a yearly bicycle ride across Oklahoma. The first year I rode, it started in Duncan, Oklahoma and ended in Anthony, Kansas, taking us through the western high plains. During that week of riding and camping, I got “up close and personal” with the land on two Susan-powered wheels, averaging 17 miles per hour for four or five hours every day. Aside from walking, there is no better way to get to know a place.
And what I learned is, first of all, it is not flat. The elevation change from Duncan to Cheyenne is 1,200 feet and on a bicycle you feel it. And neither is it featureless . . . maybe you’ve heard of Red Rock Canyon, the Gloss Mountains, the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge. These are things you don’t see from the interstate. You might glimpse them from a state highway, but to really know them you have to take the back roads. There you smell the wheat, feel the breeze, cross the creeks on one-lane bridges and welcome the surprise of daffodils or wild roses blooming around old homesteads.
And Oklahoma has plenty of back roads . . . 84,984* miles of county roads, to be exact. According to Susan Allison, Public Information Officer for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, about 59,000* miles of those are unpaved, which means they may be “unimproved,” graded, or gravel. To put this in perspective, the earth’s circumference at the equator is 25,000 miles. Think about it . . .you can (figuratively) go around the world twice on unpaved roads and never leave Oklahoma!
So it was natural that when Bill and I decided to take a motorcycle trip to visit Chris and Claire Johnson at their Wichita Mountain ranch, we would think of making it a “back roads” journey. Admittedly, this decision was partially driven by our choice of motorcycles for the weekend.
We were on the horns of a dilemma. Bill had recently “jacked up” the BMW F650GS (actually returning it to its original height) so he could use it for training. Too tall!
I could ride the Triumph Bonneville, but the British bike didn’t feel like my cup of tea for this ride. A bit too stiff.
And there’s the Yamaha XT 225. A great all-around bike. But isn’t it too small to ride that far?
Then I thought of Lois Pryce, whose book, Lois on the Loose, I had recently read. She rode an XT 225 from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. It dawned on me that riding my XT225 from Norman to Lawton would be sissy stuff by comparison. So, like Goldilocks, I decided the XT would be “just right.”
“Are you sure?” asked Bill.
“Yep,” I said. “It will be fine, if we take the back roads.”
“You don’t want to ride the BMW?”
“No, you ride the BMW. I’ll have fun riding the XT.” And I meant it.
In preparation, we located our Oklahoma atlas and gazetteer, The Roads of Oklahoma, and extracted the pages for Grady County, Caddo County, and Comanche County. The maps in this book show all 84,984 miles of those back roads, indicating whether they are paved or unpaved. This is a great resource for planning but, as it turned out, not my preference for way-finding. We ended up using my GPS to occasionally get our bearings and otherwise simply zigzagged south and west from Norman until we got close to where we hoped to be.
We chose the hottest week of the year to go. Not from masochism or bravado, that’s just the way the timing worked out. This first weekend in August promised temperatures over 105, but the heat wasn’t yet oppressive as we departed, so we carried our “cool vests” rather than donning them.
Heading south, we made short work of the one mile of I-35 across the South Canadian River, the only interstate driving we did the entire weekend. The XT was glad to be done with it. Highway 9 took us west to Blanchard and from there we plunged into the back roads. Riding dual sport motorcycles gives us peace of mind about tackling any of Oklahoma’s county roads. Nice to have the freedom to keep going when the asphalt turns to deep gravel.
Thirty-five miles of zigging and zagging delivered us to Alex, where we stopped for a drink from our water bottles. There the main street runs through a shuttered-up downtown. In front of the community center stands a marker paying tribute to the man for whom the town was named. W.V. Alexander was a Civil War veteran who, through his marriage to a Chickasaw woman, controlled a large tract of Indian Territory’s Washita Valley, including this townsite. We stayed long enough to snap a photo of the marker and wave at the driver of a semi-truck, the only other vehicle passing through. Then we set out for the next set of zigs. Admittedly, there weren’t many curves. But lots of zags.
Serendipity is the pleasant result of keeping your options open, and it led us next to Marlow. We didn’t intend to ride so far south, but this course held our interest, and on we went. As we rolled into town we were ready for a break, so we stopped to cool off and have a drink of water in the shade of Redbud Park, then shared a delightful lunch at Giuseppe’s Ristorante, (see Bill’s article in the September 2008 issue of Ride Oklahoma).
Frequent stops and diligent hydration kept us going in the triple-digit temperatures. From Marlow, we made our way around the north side of Fort Sill. Grass grows through the asphalt of barely-paved one-lane roads on this northwesterly track. We kept our speeds under 50 most of the time, making both me and the Yamaha happy. Soon we fiybd ourselves in Elgin, from whence we veered west to Meers, then through the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge to the home of our friends.
After a good visit, a tasty meal from Claire’s abundant garden, and a good night’s rest, we started the journey home. It was already mid-afternoon and we didn’t hesitate to wear our cool vests, knowing we would need them. Bill gave them a good soaking and we departed. In spite of our mutual agreement not to seek out dirt roads on this hot, dusty afternoon, we succeeded in doing exactly the opposite, spending most of the trip on dirt and gravel, having . . . and creating . . . a blast. The phrase, “Eat my dust” comes to mind as clouds of the white stuff erupted from our wheels.
Traveling north and east to Apache, we were greeted by quiet streets in contrast to the lively atmosphere in 2004 when we rolled in under our own power during FreeWheel . Then the mood was festive, with more than 1,000 cyclists nearly doubling the town’s population. Apache was one of our favorite stops on that traveling bicycle camp for grown-ups. Townspeople went all out to welcome our caravan with food, music, camping and showers set up at the local fairgrounds. But this time, it was an ordinary Sunday afternoon and a very hot one at that. Most folks were wisely staying indoors under the A/C. We soaked our vests, got gas and Gatorade at a convenience store, and parked on a bench to rehydrate and watch the locals.
We had started back fairly late in the day and it was getting on toward evening as we arrived in Verden on the heels of an intriguing ride up a freshly oiled hard-pack dirt road to a red butte, where we were greeted with a locked gate. No problem . . . turnarounds are easy on my little bike. In town, one more stop for a cold drink and another soaking for the vests. “How far is it to Chickasha?” I asked the store clerk. My GPS battery gave out so we’re guessing.
“Oh, 10 or 15 miles,” she responded congenially. We were getting close.
We continued northeast and crossed over I-44, zigging our way back to Blanchard. We knew the way home now, without map or GPS, and soon we pulled into our driveway covered with dust and grit, thoroughly satisfied. The weekend was rich with exploration, discovery and companionship. Western Oklahoma is better known and better loved, and the XT was indeed big enough for our state’s plentiful back roads. And there’s a bonus . . . with about 250 miles under our belts from the weekend, we are 1% of the way towards circumnavigating the globe . . . right in our own back yard.
*Department of Transportation statistics as of 2008
This story was originally written in 2008.
Concertina wire draws my gaze away from the lenticular clouds shifting from flying saucers into mother ships in the western Oklahoma sky. We’ve been driving northwest from Woodward on Highway 270 looking for Fort Supply, and we should be there by now. The fence topped with razor wire clearly indicates we are approaching a prison, but where is the fort? Finally we distinguish the sign for the Fort Supply Historic Site, almost lost amid the prison barrier and institutional buildings. We are greeted by armed guards when we turn in, and muddle through an explanation about being with the Oklahoma Historical Society’s annual conference and wanting to visit the historical site. They don’t seem to be expecting anyone, although a large bus full of conference-goers will soon follow. The four of us — me, my husband Bill, and my parents Jane and Jack Morgan — have come separately by private car.
Winding through a maze of buildings of uncertain purpose we find the parking lot for the historic site and there we do indeed seem to be expected. Two friendlier-looking men greet us as we get out of the car. Site manager Shayne House and Mead Ferguson, president of Friends of Historic Fort Supply’s board of directors, are a contrasting pair. Mead is slight, white-haired and gregarious and Shayne a dark-haired, bearded young man originally from Hawaii, but both are full of knowledge and enthusiasm about the place we are here to see. A young woman is sweeping out the entrance to the guard house as we approach. They may not get many visitors.
Originally named Camp Supply, the military installation 13 miles northwest of Woodward, Oklahoma was established in late 1868 as the supply base for Major General Philip H. Sheridan’s winter campaign against the American Indian tribes of the southern Great Plains. From here Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. Army Seventh Cavalry marched south and destroyed the Cheyenne village of Chief Black Kettle at the Battle of the Washita on November 27, 1868. For the next 25 years the site served as a base for soldiers patrolling the region in an effort to contain the tribes and keep out trespassers. Fort Supply was closed in 1894 and its grounds have since been used for the state’s first mental hospital and a minimum security correctional facility, whose ominous fence it was that caught our attention.
They’re expecting the bus to arrive at any time, and House and Ferguson seem to feel a bit constrained, needing to be here to greet it but also wanting to show us around. Not getting too far afield, our small group wanders through the 1892 brick guard house, the only brick building erected here by the army. It is clean, pleasant, and feels spacious in spite of the barred windows on the room reserved for military prisoners and the two dark closets for solitary confinement. A few artifacts are displayed in an adjacent room and we notice a bathroom with surprisingly modern toilets and a large tub.
I want to get outside and shoot photos of other buildings, so I start to wander off. Ferguson goes along with us to the 1882-era teamster’s cabin, the oldest building on the site. It is a rare example of a common frontier construction method, with walls built of vertical cedar logs.
Then it’s off to the stockade, with House in tow. The stockade is a replica but we are told it provides a good idea of what the original might have looked like, and its blacksmith shop appeals to Bill and Jack, where they get an educated mini-lecture from House on the artifacts there, including an anvil and forge.
Next Ferguson leads us over to the 1879 commanding officer’s quarters, a large wood frame house with a long veranda facing the former parade grounds, now the prison yard where inmates stroll on a path that circles the yard. The house is surprisingly well preserved for a wood structure of that era and is in the process of being repainted. Ferguson says Sherwin-Williams had a hard time coming up with the proper green for the paint needed to restore the house to its original color. Not surprising. Bill notices the float.glass in the windows, a sign that the windows are old, if not original.
We head for the car, ready to get back and prepare for an evening event, and just then the bus arrives.The large group had toured a wind farm before coming here and will probably have to settle for a shorter version of the private tour we just enjoyed. Good timing on our part.
Fort Supply was officially closed in September 1894 and was turned over to the Department of the Interior on February 26, 1895. In May 1908 the first patients arrived at the Western Oklahoma Hospital, which used the old post’s buildings and grounds as the state of Oklahoma’s first mental health facility. The Oklahoma Historical Society currently administers five structures and a replica stockade as the Fort Supply Historic Site. The grounds of the old post are also occupied by Western State Psychiatric Center and William S. Key Correctional Center. The Fort Supply Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 (NR 71000675).
For more, see okhistory.org/fortsupply
susan dragoo