Bartlesville, OK, to Oklahoma City, OK
As with much of central Oklahoma, the story of Oklahoma City really begins on a specific day, April 22, 1889. Prior to that time only a watering stop near the Southern Kansas Railway’s crossing of the North Canadian River, known as Oklahoma Station, had been established in 1887. Much of the surrounding area was known as the “Unassigned Lands”, an area of nearly 3,000 square miles in northern Oklahoma which had been ceded to the United States by the Creek and Seminole nations in the aftermath of the Civil War. On April 22, 1889, the Land Run of 1889 took place at noon. Over fifty thousand people (“Boomers”) had gathered along the eastern edges of the Unassigned Lands. Following the guidelines of the Homestead Act, settlers rushed into the territory and claimed land. Between four and six thousand people came to Oklahoma Station to establish homes and businesses. The original territorial capital was the larger city of Guthrie, about 35 miles to the north, but a vote in 1910 resulted in Oklahoma City being selected as the state capital. Today Oklahoma City is a metropolitan area of nearly 1.5 million people sprawled over an enormous area so it really doesn’t seem to be that large. The actual city center is a cluster of high-rise buildings, dominated by the 50-story Devon Tower.
There was an incredible amount of road construction going on around the city but I focused on three specific destinations: The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, the American Banjo Museum, and the Oklahoma City National Museum. A looming storm forced me to rush my visit so in no way is this a comprehensive look at the “OKC.” However, it’s clear there’s a lot to like about visiting the area!
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum crowns a tree-covered hill northeast of the city center. Tent-like canopies draw visitors into a central hall that is dominated by “The End of the Trail”, a sculpture by James Earle Fraser that he intended to be a sympathetic figure honoring the end of a free people, the Native American Indian. An 18 foot tall plaster version was created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco with the intent that a bronze casting would follow. Material restrictions caused by the advent of WWI made the project impossible. The plaster statue was dismantled but in 1920 the citizens of Visalia, Ca, salvaged the discarded pieces and reassembled it outside in Mooney Grove Park outside of Visalia. There it remained, gradually deteriorating over the next 48 years. In 1968 the National Cowboy Hall of Fame purchased the plaster statue and now it serves as the centerpiece of the museum.
The enormous west wing houses nine separate galleries. Two large canvases showcase the romantic vision of the west that painters in the 19th century presented to those on the East Coast who looked to the west as a paradise of free land and endliess opportunity. Alibert Bierstadt’s 1867 “Emigrants Crossing the Plains” (left) and Alfred Jacob Miller’s 1839 ”Cavalcade, Indian Grand Parade” dominate a gallery of early western paintings and sculpture.
Two expansive galleries display art by Native American artists and secondly, collections of historic items from their culture.
A large wall covering depicts in a rainbow of colors the homelands of the various Indian tribes as they existed when the Europeans first invaded North America.
The Western film genre had its’ roots in a novel, “The Virginian”, published in 1902 by Owen Wister. It helped define the Western hero as a self-reliant, masculine character fleeing the constraints of civilization. Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery”, released in 1903, was the first dramatic feature film characterized as a “Western.” It featured outlaws, a handsome sheriff and a chase scene. The gallery documents the evolution of the Western movie throughout the years.
America’s only truly indigenous sport, rodeo, evolved as a colorful celebration of the riding and roping skills of the working cowboy.
Hunting is an important activity in the West and a large gallery documents guns, clothing and trophies over the years.
Of course, any examination of the West would be incomplete without documenting the crucial role played by the US Cavalry. A quote from President Theodore Roosevelt recognizes the life of a soldier. “Faithful, uncomplaining, unflinching, the soldiers wearing the national uniform lived for many years at their lonely little posts, facing unending toil and danger with quiet endurance, surrounded by vast solitudes, and menaced by the most merciless of foes.”
Inside a very large space “Prosperity Junction” is a re-creation of a frontier town at night. Each building is authentic in design and style of the era. Electricity has just arrived in Prosperity Junction and only Main Street is illuminated by lights strung along the street. The interior of buildings are still lit by kerosene and gas lamps. The fact that the lighting was so dim made taking clear photographs a challenge. My little Canon One-Shot camera does pretty well most of the time, but it was definitely challenged by Prosperity Junction!
The interior of the bank, school house, and store.
A windmill rises above the train depot at the end of the street.
The museum building is somewhat of a “U” shape, with the wing to the right of “The End of the Road” sculpture (explored in all of the pictures above) much larger than the wing on the left. The smaller wing houses a restaurant, offices and meeting space. It is anchored by another James Earle Fraser sculpture, this one of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was considered a “western” president, signing major legislation in 1862 that lead to the settlement of the West including the Homestead Act, the College Land Grant, and the Railroad Land Grant. The Lincoln Highway was America’s first transcontinental auto road and in the 1920’s the New Jersey chapter of the Lincoln Highway Association commissioned the statue of Lincoln to mark the eastern terminus of the highway. Rather than a heroic statue, Fraser created an image of a thoughtful, contemplative man. The original bronze sculpture sits in New Jersey, in 1968 the National Cowboy Association acquired the original plaster model for the Oklahoma City Museum.
Out back of the museum building is a beautifully landscaped plaza and park area dotted with western sculptures and some interesting grave sites.
The park is dominated by a bronze of the man who came to personify the West, Buffalo Bill.
A path wanders around the shady knoll while a small stream trickles through the trees.
An example of one of the grave memorials scattered around the grounds is that of “Tornado”, a championship rodeo bucking bull buried on the grounds.
Really a first-class museum experience. About five miles south out on the flats my next adventure takes place in an area known as “Bricktown.”
Bricktown
At one time four railroads had freight operations east of the railroad tracks that run next to the downtown business center of Oklahoma City. Between 1898 and 1930 numerous brick warehouses of varying heights were built in the area. The boom was short lived and the area began to decline later in the 1930’s with the advent of the Great Depression. By 1980 Bricktown was a cluster of abandoned buildings. In the late 1990’s city leaders lead a redevelopment of the area, anchored by a new baseball park and the construction of a mile-long canal (yes, a canal in the middle of the city!) Today Bricktown is the entertainment center of the Oklahoma City, blocks of restaurants, bars and boutiques. I enter the area at the west end of the canal. The cityscape rises in the background. Down along the canal I am surrounded by the warehouses with ground floors containing bars and restaurants, upper floors offices, apartments and condominiums.
There’s even a little “putt-putt” golf course along the canal.
The reason that I went to the Brickyard in the first place was to visit the American Banjo Museum, housed in a converted warehouse on Sheridan Avenue on the northern edge of the neighborhood. It’s in the smallest building on the block, fourth from the corner in this picture.
American Banjo Museum
The American Banjo Museum is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the banjo with over 400 banjos on display across two floors. Galleries include displays from the African origin of the banjo, Minstrel Age instruments from the early 1800’s, Classical Age banjo’s from the late 1800’s and banjo’s used during the Bluegrass and Western eras leading to the present day. An introduction to the banjo is done through a video display through a screen stenciled with a band of black players. Video screens scattered around the wall alternated with video and sound as the history of the banjo is explored. This picture is a shot of the final screen, the only time that all of the individual screens lit up.
By the middle of the 1800’s minstrel groups popularized the use of the banjo. Consisting of white players made up in black face, minstrel groups were very popular. The first commercial maker of banjos in the United States was William Boucher of Baltimore. An extremely rare 1845 Boucher banjo is on display.
An 1854 Bullock Fretless, made by A.B. Bullock of Providence, Rhode Island, is one of less than 200 documented pre-Civil War banjos in existence.
Banjos became very popular near the end of the 1800’s and numerous examples are on display.
A large area is devoted to the legacy of Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets and Kermit the Frog in the 1950’s.
Around the corner is the gallery devoted to Blue Grass musicians, including Earl Scruggs.
Upstairs the large gallery is dominated by banjos from the Jazz Age of the first part of the 20th Century.
A traveling exhibition gallery is currently housing a display about Philadelphia’s Mummers, a term derived from Swedish immigrants in southeastern Pennsylvania in the mid 1600’s. The day after Christmas was celebrated by roaming groups, often costumed, traveling from house to house entertaining friends with music while enjoying the host’s food and drink.
The last gallery is the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame.
The American Banjo Museum is a fitting ornament for the historic Brickyard. Just over a mile to the west in the heart of the city center is another far more sobering monument, the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum
Standing on the eastern corner of Robinson and 5th Street the view south looks down into the heart of the city center.
The view straight west from the spot is far more sobering. NW 5th Street ends in a stark, haunting black arch marking the near edge of the Oklahoma City Memorial.
A picture from early 1995 of the downtown cityscape shows highlighted in bold on the bottom left the Alfred P. Murrah Building. A close-up of the building shows the gleaming curtain of glass that reached up nine floors on the north side along NW 5th Street.
The building contained regional offices for the Social Security Administration, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, a Veterans Affairs vocational rehabilitation counseling center, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. It also contained recruiting offices for the US Military and America’s Kids, a children’s day care center. On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder rental truck on NW 5th Street near the center of the building at the bottom of that glass wall and a few minute later, at 9:01am, the truck, packed with approximately 7,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane and diesel fuel exploded. The back third of the building collapsed and nearby buildings were also severely damaged. 168 people were killed, including 19 children in the day care, and over 800 others injured. Many of us remember vividly following the tragedy on television that morning.
A photograph from the next day shows the extent of the devastation.
Walking across Robinson I look across the memorial.
Down two flights of stairs one comes out onto the sunken memorial plaza. A block long reflecting pool has replaced NW 5th Street and stretches from the black arch that I entered which is engraved with the time 9:01am (the time of the bombing) to a second black arch on the west, engraved with 9:03am (signifying the time healing began.) To the south of the reflecting pool, on the actual foot print of the building, a gentle lawn rises. The lawn is dotted with 168 empty chairs, honoring the 168 people who lost their lives in the tragedy. The chairs are arranged in nine rows, signifying the individual number of people who died on each floor of the Murrah Building.
Rising on the north side of the pool is a terraced seating area and at the top of that is a circular plaza surrounding a large tree, perhaps the most enduring symbol of hope in the memorial. The 90 year old elm tree had been the only tree in the middle of a concrete parking lot across NW 5th Street from the Murrah Building. People would arrive for work early just to snag one of the few spots in the shade under the tree. Amazingly, the tree survived a bombing that had such force that it severely damaged the Oklahoma Journal Building standing behind it. This picture was taken the day after the bombing standing at the base of the destroyed north wall of the Murrah Building looking north across NW 5th Street towards the side of the Journal Building. The tree stands defiantly above the debris.
Today the elm tree flourishes behind a low circular wall above the memorial plaza as a quiet sentinel of hope.
Behind the tree is the Oklahoma Journal Record Building which now houses the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum. An emotional path through two floors of galleries, mostly visuals accompanied by the actual words of survivors, tracing the chronology of the day of the bombing and then the investigation that followed. The entrance has a huge picture of Oklahoma City as it existed that day with the Murrah Building standing out at the bottom left of the picture.
A map details the area around the Murrah Building in the center block.
The events of the morning are detailed in mesmerizing specificity in the entrance gallery. A security camera at the neighboring Regency Tower Apartments recorded in the upper left corner of the picture the Ryder rental van driving by at 8:56am, just five minutes before the explosion occurred.
A meeting was getting underway in the Water Resources Boardroom. Museum visitors stand in a facsimile of the board room and listen to the actual tape of the meeting being called to order. The normality of the proceedings is horrifying as they abruptly end at 9:01am with the sounds of a disintegrating building and screams of people in the boardroom. Abruptly the tape stops and the wall behind the table comes alive with the portraits of the 168 people who had just died…
As one leaves the boardroom and enters the exhibition proper, below a beam from the Murrah Building a copy of the sign that used to adorn the entrance of the building is painted on the wall, a few letters covered by the actual remnants of the sign found after the explosion.
As you walk through the museum audio commentary is provided by survivors and other people recalling their memories of the day.
Barely one half hour after the explosion the investigation began, starting with an examination of the ground zero, the crater created by the explosion.
This aerial photo shows the strength of the bomb. The Murrah Building is on the left, the Regency Tower Apartments on the right. The debris field shooting off to the left from the Murrah Building is the approximate path that the Ryder truck’s rear axle housing traveled in the blast.
The investigation unfolded quickly. The VIN number of the Ryder truck was identified from the wreckage and it was traced to a Ryder Truck Rental in Miami, Florida. The agency was able to determine that the truck was currently assigned to a body shop in Junction City, Kansas. An employee of the body shop was able to help the FBI artist create a sketch of the two men whom he thought might have rented the van. The man on the right turned out not to be involved, but the man on the left was Timothy McVeigh, the man who committed the crime.
The rest of the investigation is explained, interspersed with actual pieces of the evidence that lead to the conviction and execution of Timothy McVeigh and imprisonment of his primary accomplice, Terry McNichols. The museum details the progress of the recovery as well as the investigation in a series of passages organized by time of day.
One of the most poignant displays is an interactive photograph of the damaged building with the figures of various first responders marked. One touches the figure and hears the story of that individual’s experience.
Of all of the pictures that were taking during on the day of the bombing the most iconic, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, was a photograph of firefighter Chris Fields cradling a 1-year old Baylee Alman, found in the rubble of the day care center. Despite the efforts of the rescuers Baylee was pronounced dead at the hospital…
A Gallery of Honor respects the memories of those who died that day.
Truly a sobering experience at a museum that manages to honor the memory of the victims while preserving the detailed information of the events. A not-miss experience if you are ever in the Oklahoma City area.
Next up: The Keeper of the Flame
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