Southwestern Oklahoma

Time to see the ‘gem’ attractions of Southwestern Oklahoma. We started at the Chisholm Trail Heritage Center. This is a different museum – one section has numerous interactive activities, the best was trying to decide how to drive your cattle to market when you encountered Indians, swollen rivers, troublesome cattle, etc. Another had a 4-D (with lightning, rain, wind, and smells) movie of a cattle drive. Then a animatronic discussion around the campfire of how the Chisholm trail got its name – Chisholm for whom the trail was named was one of the first to use it – not driving cattle, but moving trade goods. Others followed his tracks and thus the Chisholm trail was created from Southern Texas to Abilene, Kansas from where the railroad could take the cattle to market.

Buffalo Soldier at Fort Sill

Next stop was Fort Sill. This fort was created to police the Indian territories before Oklahoma was a state. The fort has been continuously occupied since, so the original quadrangle of stone building is still standing from 1872. This was also the home of the Buffalo soldiers as well as many Indian troops. After statehood, the fort became the home of various artillery divisions. While we were there, we could hear the boom of the artillery in the distance. While we were there it started boring and both of us got soaked trying to get back to the car.

Our camping site is up in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. Just west of Fort Sill, the terrain started changing. Hills arose filled with prairie grass, yellow flowers and large rock formations. This preserve was created in 1905, just before the Oklahoma land rush. It’s significance is that it served as a preserve for buffalo (at the time most bison were in zoos), elk (which had been reduced to just the states of Montana, and Wyoming), and big horn cattle (which had interbred with other cows). The country reminded me of how different the Black Hills are from the rest of South Dakota. There are quite a few campers up here, most from other parts of Oklahoma.

Wichita Mountains