A Very OK Podcast
Episode 45: “Parks in Oklahoma City”
March 18, 2025
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s great to see you on this great spring day in Oklahoma City. How have you been?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, I’m doing great. I finished my tax prep this morning. And so I rewarded myself by playing pickleball for a couple of hours. So. The day started well.
Thompson: Yeah. That’s great. I did not get to play pickleball today, but I’m hoping to later this week. I’m going to visit my mother down in Texas, and I’m hoping that she has a couple of games lined up for us because we like to play together from time to time as well. So, legislature’s in full swing right now, so I’m monitoring all of our bills that we have going on over there. And I, this week, I’ve already made several trips back and forth. We had Bob Wills Day at the Capitol earlier this week, and I spent a lot of time at the Capitol and boots on the, the marble floors. And by the end of Monday night, my feet were begging for relief.
Blackburn: Yeah. You know, Trait, right now I’m writing that 20th anniversary history of the History Center for The Chronicles. It’ll be in the hopefully the fall issue, if I can get it done in time. But as I’m going through that, I’ve kept all my calendars back to 1978. I guess I’m basically a closet archivist. But anyway, I’ve got all those calendars as I’ve been going through it, looking at the meetings, you know, as we were working on trying to get funding and legislative authority, I realized how many days I was at the Capitol and why I have so many bad memories. But, but a lot of good memories, too. But it’s usually a struggle, you know, you’re trying to get noticed over there. Typically, we little agencies are kind of the last ones to get, you know, help. And, but the first to be cut generally, they’ll give us that. So it was one year, it’d be a revenue shortfall. Then I’d be chasing some legislation and trying to get funding for something. And and it was always, and so I can empathize with you having to be there a lot this time of year. And you got to stay around Monday through Thursday because you’re subject to being called. They might call you and say, get over here in 30 minutes. The subcommittee is about to make a decision. You know, those sorts of things.
Thompson: Yeah. That happens. I had a little bit of a funny story. I mentioned Bob Wills Day at the Capitol on Monday, and I had a bill that passed out of committee last week. And, yeah, Representative Fetgatter is my author on that bill, and he’s been doing a great job, great to work with and I, in my own little notes, I said, okay, I’m going to, after Bob Wills Day, I’m going to get with Representative Fetgatter ask him to schedule that bill for a floor hearing for us. Well, he starts texting me that the bill’s going to be on the floor that day, Bob Wills Day at the Capitol, and he wanted a few, clarification on the talking points. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even. So it shows you how up to it I was. And of course, you know, sometimes walking and chewing gum at the same time for me is a little difficult. But, wasn’t prepared for my bill to be on the floor, but thankfully it passed, I think with 78 votes on the House. So off we go to the Senate side on that particular bill.
Blackburn: You may have learned this about him. The first time I met him. He came in one day. He had been painting a house and he came to my office. This is the new representative? But anyway, he sat down. We got along great. He had been in a hair band in the ’80s when the rock and roll would come, moved into a new phase. It was beyond disco, and the hair bands were coming out. He was a rock and roll, I think, guitar player in a hair band at the time.
Thompson: That doesn’t surprise me.
Blackburn: But no, yeah, that makes sense. But, he’ll be a good supporter of collecting music, I think just because that part of his own heritage.
Thompson: You know, I was going to go back to a comment you made when you call yourself a closet archivist. Some people call that a hoarder, Bob.
Blackburn: A hoarder. (laughter)
Thompson: Well, I want to get into our topic today because we have a really good one. And, you know, on this show, we’ve had an opportunity to promote books that other people have written. And I’m really excited that we get to promote a book that you’ve written this time around. And, we have a great guest with us. We’re going to talk about the history of the park system in Oklahoma City. And of course, we’ll broaden that topic a little bit as we get through it and talk about some of the history about how we get to that. But, we have Brian Dougherty with us here today, and he grew up in Oklahoma City. He holds degrees in horticulture and landscape design from Oklahoma State University, where he later served as associate professor and department head at the John E. Kirkpatrick Horticulture Center. In 1998, he joined the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, guiding numerous beautification and environmental projects during his 24 years as program director of the Parks and Public Spaces Initiative and the Margaret Annis Boys Trust. A licensed landscape architect and a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Dougherty has dedicated his career to the planning, planting and maintenance of parks and public spaces, as well as educating communities on their value. In retirement, he tends to 80 acres of gardens, pastures and native habitats at his family farm in Hinton, Oklahoma. Brian, I am thrilled to have you with us. You’re the coauthor with Bob on this new book and I am really excited to get into this topic today.
Brian Doughterty: I appreciate that. I think it’s, it’s well worth discussing and it’s well worth visiting with people about.
Thompson: Well, Bob, before we jump right into it, it’s kind of funny. We were talking about state representatives, and I had Representative Ellyn Hefner emailed me this Saturday, and she’s a friend of the podcast. If we have people out there who are really, you know, she always tells me she listens to them. And so big shout out to Representative Hefner here. But she emailed me on Saturday and she said, I would really love to know some of the history of Will Rogers Park. It’s one of our most beautiful parks in the city. And I said, it’s funny that you should mention that, but, in the coming week, we’re going to do a podcast about it, and there’s a book, a great book that’s coming out about the history of parks in Oklahoma City. So just stay tuned. We’re going to, you know, hopefully answer all your questions you have about Will Rogers and some of our other parks in the city.
Blackburn: Well, and Trait, Brian can talk about how this came about because really, the community foundation, Kirkpatrick Family Foundation, wanted to give a gift to Brian after his years of service to the state and the cause. And, we got together, talked about outlines, how to do the book, and we both came the same conclusion—we should coauthor. And the reason that coauthorships don’t always work. I’ve had those before. Typically it works best when I said, can you do those four chapters I’ll do these four. But in this one we integrated our backgrounds so well because I knew the history of Oklahoma City in particular and the state in general. Brian knew the history of the parks. He knew a lot about the people who had developed the parks. And we can talk about some of his heroes today. But he had been collecting files, I’d say forty years?
Doughtery: Fifty years.
Blackburn: Fifty years.
Doughtery: Forty-eight years.
Blackburn:He has been collecting for, and not just parks, but beautification efforts, planting trees. What kind of plants work in Oklahoma? How do you deal with the soil types? And he’s worked for some of the elites of Oklahoma. Mrs. Fred Jones, he was her gardener. He’s worked for John Kirkpatrick, others, and he has gathered all this material. So as we would launch into a chapter, I might be doing a lot of the wordsmithing, but it’s based on Brian’s research, the stories that Brian wanted to pull up because you can’t tell every story. And so it turned out to be a great partnership, and it was a good collaboration. And I can’t say that about every book I’ve coauthored, but this one, I’m really proud of it. And I think the quality of the story reflects Brian’s background, as well as my storytelling ability and knowledge of Oklahoma City in general. But I’m really proud of that. Brian. Why don’t you start with what Nancy Anthony and Liz Eichman wanted to do when you retired?
Doughtery: When I retired, there was a it was a surprise. It was at the retirement party. And they came up to me and they presented me with this opportunity where they wanted me to write a book for my retirement. And I’m kind of thinking, okay, I’m going to be going out at the farm and I’m going to be in the great vineyard, and I’m going to be this. But it’s, you know, for 48 years, people have asked me to write a book, some about trees, and the whole understanding of trees and soil and all, and some about parks. But, you know, together they go together so much that, you know, a park isn’t really a park without trees. And trees, a lot of times the happiest place is in a park where they can do their, their vision. So anyway, the opportunity came out for that. And with that and they said, we just want you to do this. And of course I had never done a book. I had hundreds and hundreds of files and pictures. And when Bob got in touch with me, just to give me a few tidbits of information, I just went home to my wife and I said, man, if I could just get Bob to do this with me, I think that would be. And I think it’s been it’s been way more than just a co-authorship. It’s been a great friendship. I think we both knew each other. We’d both spoken at different activities in the past, but this was really neat working with Bob over the last two years.
Thompson: Well, Brian, you don’t have to lie here. We’re amongst friends. You can tell us that he was. How terrible he was.
Doughtery: He was great. That’s great.
Blackburn: Well, and the bonus that I got out of this book was we started it just as the asparagus was ripening last year. So I had fresh asparagus for a month. Mary Lee and Brian would say, can we swing by with some more asparagus? Yeah, we just ate the last of it. So, and, I think I got some jelly not long ago. So, I’ve had benefits out of this.
Thompson: Well, maybe I can write a book.
Doughtery: Benefits from the farm.
Thompson: Well, I’d love to know. You know, just a little bit Brian about, you know, what made you interested in this line of work? As you you know, we heard your impressive resume and everything, but what got you interested?
Doughtery: I think I was fortunate working, growing up in Oklahoma City and and cut my teeth mowing lawns. I would grew up over in Windsor Hills when it was very new. And, you know, 23rd and Meridian was kind of the western edge almost. And Will Rogers Park was a place I was very much. And I had five brothers. I was very much in scouts. We did, you know, we did the summer camps. We did that. I remember one time getting selected to go to the conservation camp, and every day we did a different activity. We laid sod, we did different things. I remember Bob Jenni came in to do reptile study with us, and I remember those. And as time went on, I remember going to Will Rogers Park and doing the mile swim and the, you know, Red Cross swimming. And I remember going down to the old amphitheater at Will Rogers Park, and Bob Jenni would be there, and all the Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, campfire, we’d all be there and they do an afternoon where they teach us about some of that for our different badges. I remember going one time and they set up telescopes and the amphitheater Will Rogers, and it was so awesome. And we all did astronomy there. That was, you know, so, so center of my life wasn’t every day at the park. But that was a big part of it. And I think in the gardens over there, I remember Easter Sunday for years. That’s where dad took us all with mom. That’s where the picture was taken in the rose garden, and that was part of it. So you got familiar as I went to school, had no idea, although it was, you know, scouting was it, and I loved working hard. I loved hauling hay, I love that. And somebody said, well, you know, you need to go into architecture. And I’m like, I don’t know about that. And then somebody came over one day and he was an architect. And he goes, if these architects that mow lawns, which is not really what it was, he said, go over to Agricultural Hall. And I went over and met the department head, Steve Owenby, and he said, we’d love somebody like you, somebody who likes being down in the trenches, but will understand this. And so it was a little unconventional way of becoming a landscape architect, because I was in the maintenance and I was in the construction. And a lot of times that was not where a lot of them were. It was at the design end. And yet I’m like, and it was it was, qualified later with Mr. Kirkpatrick where he would say, Brian, anybody can build this, but we’ll spend three to five times this maintaining that over the course of time, he said. When you’re designing anything, think about how you can control both ongoing maintenance costs. And so one thing turned to another. I had the opportunity to work for fantastic people over my life. I, I loved the planting design. I loved understanding why trees would grow and what trees wouldn’t grow here, and why parks became and then with the Community Foundation, working with neighborhoods, working with cities, working with their, developing parks.
Blackburn: Brian, the one part of the story you left out here is your grandfather and the family farm in Caddo County. It’s near Hinton, but it’s out in in the canyon country. If anyone out there listening is familiar with Red Rock Canyon, that’s the country where your grandfather tried to farm. And of course, farming is failure. Failure as well as success. But that was a fragile environment. And of course, we’ll talk about that here in a minute with parks. We are in a difficult zone to grow because we’re in a transitional climate position. We’re in a transitional soil types. So we’re right at the border and, north and south, east and west, one of the most difficult places in the country to grow things sustainably. Unless you just go back to a couple of native plants. Well, your granddad was having to do that to survive, to raise his family. And you got to experience his love of the land, his knowledge of the soils, this knowledge of what plants would work, what might be marketable, what he needed to feed the horses and the cattle. So I think that probably had a big impact.
Doughtery: I think it did. And we spent many a scout camp out on the farm where the troop would go out and would be at my granddad’s farm, and you’d be out there and later on, people, you know, you would talk about why this, this species of tree would probably make it and why this one didn’t. I had some friends that were fairly high up in USDA and they said, you know, we consider Oklahoma City and right west probably the most difficult place in the United States to establish new trees because you have so many factors coming in and none of them are predictable with time. Look at this spring, you know, it’s nice right now. Well, I mean, we might go all the way till April 15th with hardly a freeze, or we might go back down to, you know, some and you come out of a drought. So there’s so many factors and I appreciate that. And I think living it and then having and then teaching and people say why didn’t this. And you’re always reevaluating, and then looking at parks and looking at what they bring back to the community.
Thompson: Bob, I’d love to, you know, one of the surprising things to me about this book is you would expect a book about the history of parks in Oklahoma City that you would start sometime around the 1890s or early, you know, around 1900. But you guys go back a few million years and you start with what was going on here. Oklahoma City was underneath a lake. And you talk about how this area developed. Can you start and get into a little bit about what’s happening in the topography of here that’s forming our soil, forming the vegetation, and how we get to the climate that you mentioned and the and the type of atmosphere that you mentioned?
Blackburn: Well, sure. Just, to move about 270 million years here in 60 seconds, until about 270 million years ago, we were below an inland sea. And of course, the continents were moving around. But then when the Rocky Mountain uplift started, then that started changing the topography of what we now call Oklahoma. So that’s when we get that that slant from the northwest down to the southeast, going from Black Mesa down to Broken Bow. And we get that. Well, as that was changing, of course, you have the layers of sediment that that fell to the bottom of the sea. You have layers of, of fish remains that will become limestone. You have different kinds of soils at different times. In that 200 million time period that would settle and those sediments built up, well, organic material would be there, would become coal, some organic material would become natural gas, some in oil. But the soils, and then you start getting the runoff from the, from the high altitude to the low altitudes, bringing in soils with erosion, building up the prairies. And then as that changes and you get the river sheds and the, and the floods every spring and floods have been part of Oklahoma City history, really until the 1920s. But every flood would bring down more soil and drop it. And so that was changing in the flood plains. And then you had different soil types on the hilltops. And because, as the climate began to change, that it would get colder and then it would get hotter, is that in the last 10,000 years at least, we’ve been right at the borderland of what we call the Cross Timbers, and where those stunted oaks and understory grow well, and that kind of soil that Brian can explain. And then to the west of that line, and it’s almost a distinct line, you know, and you’ll see it if you look on Google Earth. Then you get into the prairie soils with native grasses. That’s why the Chisholm Trail was where it was. They didn’t want to drive cattle through that dense undergrowth. And so they went out to where it was finally open. And that’s why it’s why the Santa Fe Railroad is where it is today. They didn’t want to build, take down trees and go through that mountainous area. They wanted out here on the treeless prairie. And so we were right on that zone in Oklahoma City because the Santa Fe wanted to be there, not because it would be easy to plant stuff. They wouldn’t even have thought of that at the time. And so between that climate and the heat, and the cold, the moisture, because most of our moisture is a combination of the jet stream coming in from the northwest, moisture coming out of the gulf and where the two meet creates turbulence in the atmosphere. And we had one map. I think we put it in the book, Brian, but it’s a map showing the density of tornadoes in history. Oklahoma City is in the darkest area of the entire map of the country.
Thompson: Yeah. Spoiler alert for all of you out there.
Blackburn: Exactly. And so it’s a difficult area to grow because of the of the freezing and the thawing and different seasons and the variability, that climate of moisture, and particularly in kind of eight-year cycles, eight wetter years, eight drier years, that not always exactly that, but that’s the kind of the big picture. And so trying to predict that and to make things grow and then the different soil types that you get in, in, the red rock areas of the Cross Timbers versus the deep sediment that you get out here on the prairies, and everything grows differently.
Thompson: Brian, we have two rivers that really form the landscape here in Oklahoma City. And it kind of been the, the kings of what happens in the topography here, the North Canadian and the Deep Fork. Can you talk about their influence in this geographic area?
Doughtery: Oh, I think it’s huge. When you look at the Canadian or North Canadian, you look at a two-mile wide valley, you look at these riparian soils, you look at what the trees would have happened. Floods happened, trees got, you know, replanted themselves and came back up. And then you have a lot more severe cliffs and all there on the Deep Fork. And, you know, it starts not far from Will Rogers Park right there at 36th and Ann Arbor is the headwaters of the Deep Fork. And then it runs on down by McGuinness High School and on down by Cowboy Hall. And you turn around, and you look at that. But it’s a lot more rigid. And as Bob said, as you got farther east, you’re getting into the Cross Timbers. You’re getting into that. But the rivers were so, so vitally important. And, you know, there was the low lands and the high lands, and people that had more money and parks, they went to the high lands. They didn’t want to get flooded out, but the low lands were there. So there was always this across the nation, there was this, okay, where do you locate what? You know, maybe. And people would go. It was hot. It was brutal. On so many of my cards, it says, “Mama, it was so hot out there, but we’re going down to the river or to the park on Sunday.” People were working six days a week. Sunday was the day of rest, but they said down in Wheeler Park, 10,000 people on Saturday, on Sunday would be down at the park, just down there in that two-mile wide plains. You didn’t see about the picnics up at Deep Fork, but that was that much farther away from Oklahoma station and all. So really, the North Canadian was kind of the hub at the very beginning.
Blackburn: And then too Trait, you realize in Oklahoma City until 1904 was a walking city, is that before public transportation, you had to live close enough to your work, to your church, to shop, but also to play. And so those early parks were all along the river because that natural tree canopy, and no one had figured out how to grow many trees outside of that riparian area. And so you had the trees. No one could develop it and build houses there because of those annual floods that would come every year, very predictably. And so those became the parks. At first it was just kind of, oh, let’s go down to McClure’s Grove. And so there would have been a, the stories in the book about when McClure, who came here as an ‘89er, claimed a piece of property that was on the southern edge of Oklahoma City but went down across the river. And so there was a clump of trees there. Well, let’s go to McClure’s Grove before there was an organized park. And then the first park, really the first park, Wheeler Park, was developed along the river because people could walk to it. Now, of course, later on you get Belle Isle Park. But then there’s a streetcar to take you out to 50th Street and what would now be into Classen Boulevard. But in those early days, you had to be able to walk everywhere. You weren’t going to take your horses and your buggies. A few rich people might go out for a drive, but typically you wanted to walk to a park.
Doughtery: I think when you think about the parks in Oklahoma City, that was so new in America. A civil war happens. Olmsted in Central Park, that’s 1860, and parks were beauty spots. They were for passive recreation. They were to get people, give them a place to breathe outside of the tenement houses and the factories that were side-by-side. And we needed to give them some place where they could go and experience nature. Rural, the countryside, had the farm, and they had the brook, and they had that. But in the city, you were crammed into this area, no sewage, no trash pickup, filthy smoke, all this. But it was about passive recreation. I think the one real interesting thing is it wasn’t until right at 1900 that the first swing sets made it into a park because active recreation was really not what they wanted. People did not want that. They wanted the bridle trail. They wanted to be able to walk. They wanted the canna beds to be able, they wanted to picnic. And there was a big push back. So there are many cards you can find. I have a couple of them. It says, “Don’t walk on the grass.” It was don’t walk on the grass when they try to move. And so the first, the first recreation was the bathhouses. And again, that was community health. And they found a place where they could put them in the parks. And it was so, but it was hygiene, it was community cleanliness. So the little neighborhood park had a bathhouse next to it.
Thompson: So, Brian, you mentioned it briefly, but I wanted to go back to it just for a second. Central Park in New York City, you know, Frederick Law Olmsted, was this the first modern park?
Doughtery: I would say it’s the first park with what we call the American park movement. Yes, there were the courthouse squares. So were the places at the train station. But this was, he was a health commissioner, and he said, we have to find, we have to make a place where people in the city can experience nature, can experience the out of door, and they can breathe. And so it was very much done on that. But again, it was passive recreation. It wasn’t an active recreation. And at that time, they didn’t talk about economic development or anything. But almost overnight, it became this incredible success. And people wanted to build adjacent to the park. And so then you have St. Louis, you have Chicago, you have Minneapolis, you have park after park after park is developed. And Olmsted was involved in many, many of those parks. And then you started seeing the park system. But even at that time, that was like one big park. You might say there were so many hundred acres of parks in New York City, but it really might only be two parks. So the neighborhood park really then, it started existing about, I think, 1890, when they needed to figure out something again, with bathhouses and bath beaches, they weren’t swimming pools, they were for that. But the park was the place, and the schools had next to no ground around them. I think they did 67 schools between 1900 and 1902 in Manhattan and New York. Only one had a playground, and then the smoke and smog was so bad that they didn’t know what to do. So they razed the playgrounds and started putting them on the roofs of the school. So it wasn’t until like 1901, and you think about that, that’s kind of the same time Oklahoma was getting into it because people came from all over, and they had experienced enough of a park in Chicago or enough of a park in Kansas City. They wanted it. We wanted to grow up overnight in some of these.
Thompson: And the world’s fair had influence on this.
Blackburn: The St. Louis World’s Fair. In fact, I wanted to mention that if you think about parks cross-country, yeah, New York City is leading the way because they had the money and the resources, and they did it early enough to be able to capture a lot of those woodlands where people didn’t want to develop things anyway. But St. Louis and Kansas City, in particular are significant in our parks system. There’s a man named George Kessler. Then there’s a firm called Hare and Hare, H-A-R-E and H-A-R-E would be in and out of Oklahoma City for 30 or 40 years. George Kessler was here in the very beginning. Anton Classen, who is a German from the Midwest who came in, brought kind of this “City Beautiful” movement with him. He was a real advocate for that, started in Edmond and the land run. He’s the one that developed Boulevard and Edmond that you have now. So you modern Edmondites see Boulevard. Well, why is that named Boulevard? He actually created a boulevard that would have a landscaped median down the middle, and that was before the streetcars. He did it for beautification. He wanted to put trees. When he developed his land around what is now UCO, that was all his land. He wanted to beautify it. So he brought that with him. Another early pioneer who brought that “City Beautiful” movement in from another place was Charles “CG” Gristmill Jones, and I had known about Jones throughout. I’ve been writing books on Oklahoma City since the early ’80s, and so I’d written about Jones many times. Mainly it was economic development. It was his mills. It was that first canal that he wanted built to power his mill. I knew he was mayor. I knew he was our first legislator from Oklahoma County to the Territorial Legislature, but I didn’t know he was such an advocate for parks. And it turns out he, as mayor, was pushing for parks. He wanted it. And then another mayor would come in and say, “Oh, we’re not spending a dollar on trees.” And that was the typical attitude. Classen and Jones would have been the minority among the people who are running city government, but they kept pushing and pushing. And CG Jones was in a position of leadership enough in the in the business community that he talked his father-in-law, Mr. Wheeler, into donating some of his acreage that he had claimed. He was the banker, started the Wheeler Bank in ’89. Some of his land down on the river south of Southwest 7th Street all the way down to the river, and they call that Wheeler Park. But without CG Gristmill Jones talking his father-in-law into donating it, without CG Gristmill Jones. getting the first improvements made, I think it was in 1903 or 1904, Brian, but we have a few leaders who really believe in that “City Beautiful” movement. That was part of the Progressive Era. So if people wanted to improve living conditions and food products and control the big monopolies, part of this movement was we can do better with our recreation and quality of life, and parks was very much part of it. And fortunately, here in Oklahoma City, we had some real advocates in a position to do something about it.
Thompson: And we’ll be back after this short message.
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Thompson: So, Brian, getting back into the the discussion about Wheeler Park being one of the first parks, I want to bring in a conversation about Will Clark and his influence because he becomes someone that you call the founding architect of Oklahoma City’s park system. And, one of the ways that you end a chapter here was with the flooding of Wheeler Park, but that didn’t discourage him. Can you get into that a little bit?
Doughtery: You know, it’s like Bob said earlier, the floods down the prairies were so significant. You know, it was you know, we’ve joked for a long time, you know, you used to have to mow the river, and the river was, but then when the floods came, they were really devastating. And I talked to, there was a session I was giving a talk a number of years ago, and I said, boy, those floods. And I had some original postcards of the floods. And I said, boy, those floods were really bad down there. And he said, you know, Brian, the floods were bad. But really, what was so bad was after the flood left and the trees, then there were all these pools of water. And he said mosquitoes were our problem. He said, you couldn’t get people. Everybody knew people that had died of malaria, that had died from those. And so he said a lot of that was the high grass. And when you think about, in my maintenance hat, you think about the first mechanicalized mowers. Even though the Industrial Revolution had happened, even though motor cars were starting at the turn of the century, 1910, 1920, the first automated mowers didn’t come till 1930s in the parks. So you’re sitting there going, so how do you maintain this? How do you do this? And, you know, people would say, well, that was a Delmar Gardens. Yeah, that was an amusement park. But, you know, hard enough to push the city fathers to let us have a park. They turned down many pieces of ground because they didn’t want it. There’s no way they wanted the amusements. So the private sector would pick up the amusement park, and that was not uncommon around the country. You would see the dance hall or the beer garden or the horse races or some more, the private sector park that was a lot of times located directly next to the public sector park. And remember that it was passive recreation. So again, you didn’t have all the ball fields at that early, early time. You had the canna beds, you had the greenhouse, the conservatory down there. And so when you turn around, and they have this vision because of the floods, and it had been attempted once before because everybody knew around the country land was getting so expensive that it was hard to buy new, that the idea in Oklahoma City, we would be the first if we would go out to the far corners, and we would turn around and identify these four quadrant parks, 26.1 mile loop in a parkway, which was parks and boulevards from Kessler and on the plan. So this would be this great place to drive your carriage and to go and to go to these parks, and the streetcar would be close enough. People could get to it. The last of the parks, of the first park, were I mean, it was Northeast Park, which later became Lincoln Park, Southeast Park, which became Trosper Park, and it was a scout camp. Then you had Southwest Park, which was relatively close to the river, which became Woodson Park. And the last park was Northwest Park. That was and it was later became Will Rogers Park. And so the idea was to this parkway, what was not realized is that the motor car would be developed so fast that before the parkway was almost done, it had turned into a racetrack for advertising of the cars. And so you had this very quick transition. But the cornerstone parks were very, very, and it was 1909, it was voted with a vote of the people to fund this. And Will Clark was the mastermind.
Blackburn: Well, mastermind behind it and getting in the right designers, but also the campaign. Yeah, we found lots of newspaper articles where the Classens of the world and the CG Gristmill Jones. People were saying, “Yeah, we’ve got to do this.” There’s one prominent voice who said no. Henry Overholser says, “No, we don’t need to do this. Let’s have more neighborhood parks within a couple of blocks of everybody in town.” He wanted more parks interior. And then, too, you had the private sector because by that time we call it in the book “Parks for Profits.” So you have I. M. Putnam, who developed Putnam Park there at 36th Street, now call it Memorial Park. It was renamed after World War I and after Putnam left town. But then you also had Belle Isle Park, which is on the far north. You had Delmar Gardens down by the river that Charlie Colcord owned. Sinopoulo brothers came in and developed that. So you have these private parks, and the city officials say, well, no, the private sector is taking care. But Will Clark convinced enough people, a majority, to vote for a bond issue, to go out and buy that. You know, in government today if we were to say we wanted to buy all that land, it’d take us ten years. Yeah, to go through the process. But then he did it within a couple of months. They had options on a lot of it. and one of the real selling points was, well, before we lose our options, we need to get this approved. And so it was approved. They sold the bonds real quick and went out and bought that right away, all the way around town in those four corner parks.
Thompson: You mentioned that Grand Boulevard that connected all those parks. And I love that you have a photo in there. It’s right in front of Capitol Hill High School of one of kind of I guess the remaining stretches of that. And you know, I’ve seen that before, and I guess I just assumed it was a jogging trail. And I didn’t know that it was a part of the old Grand Boulevard.
Doughtery: And northwest, if you go out through Nichols Hills, yeah, where you come up on Grand and it takes that big loop, that is almost the same dimensions of what it was, where there would have been a bridle trail, and then there would have been the parkway and that coming on down. So you had them all the way around, and a lot of the land at that time, the developers wanted this so bad because this was going to allow Putnam Heights to happen. This was going to allow a lot of these neighborhoods to happen. And so a lot of times they would donate part of their land to make this so that this deal could go through.
Thompson: You mentioned Belle Isle Park, and that fascinates me because I’ve seen all the old postcards, and it was an amusement park, and it was started in 1907. But I look at that today, and you drive by on the interstate, and you look over there because it’s a Walmart today and a big shopping center right over there by Penn Square Mall. And I have trouble seeing in my head how this was a beautiful amusement park. And then what happened where it went away one day and now it’s, you know, just a piece of the city. That’s a fascinating thing for me. Can we talk about that part?
Doughtery: You know, I think it’s the same if you look at the parkways and you say, well. Bob and I both felt very strong that we needed to have maps for the chapter, because for 48 years people have said, “Well, where was Delmar Gardens? Where was Wheeler Park? Where was Belle Isle Park?” And so with the map in each chapter, people can go back and get a reference from where this was. And you turn around, and you look at Belle Isle, and you look at this, and you say, well, here is this grand loop. They are now where all the interstates are. So really, if you start looking at where that was easy picking as the interstate system started happening. So a big part of the loop on the west side is I-44. You look at those, and that was because you had these huge easements that used to be the Grand Loop. And so there’s only parts of it, but when you think about Classen, which was a major thoroughfare for the trolley, and then you go up and, you had Putnam Lake, which turned to Putnam Park, which turned to Memorial Park. And then it goes on to the next past Flower Garden Park, and it goes to Belle Isle, where the electric generators were to help run the trolley. And so you have that, and it was recreation. And these were pretty common around the country to see the electric parks, and the electric parks were where the generators were because there was extra heat in them, and they all had dancehalls.
Thompson: So they dammed up the Deep Fork to make the lake there.
Blackburn: There was a natural lake there. We do know during the Chisholm Trail, the cattle drives, Robert Lake had a ranch there, and there was a low spot in the river water would accumulate. Of course, it dry up in a drought, but it was, and then what Anton Classen and John Shartel did, they built a new dam because you needed a pond to generate electricity, because you’d use your coal to heat up the boilers. The water would come in a big heat. That would drive the turbines to create electricity. And then out of that, the warm water would flow out. Well, they discovered, well, we’ll have two lakes, two ponds, one for the cold water to bring in. And the output would create a heated swimming outdoor swimming pool. So why not charge people $0.15 an hour with another quarter to rent a swimming suit, because no one on swimming suits at the time, and let them swim? And then around the water was created this boating. You could rent a canoe or take a boating. There’s an island out in the middle where, you know, young people would go to do what young people do. And, and then all the other amusements, the picnics and companies would have excursions at the Belle Isle. So it was free enterprise all the way. But it started because of that generating plant that was only torn down, what, 20 years ago or so, Brian. I remember when it came around.
Doughtery: When the interstates were built there, but it was a massive open area, and that was one reason where Calvert’s Plant Interiors is, that was where the original Oklahoma City nursery was. And people would ride the trolley out, place their orders for their trees or their shrubs, and when they finished at Belle Isle, they’d get back in on the trolley and take their plants back with them. And that was a huge marketing thing. for years.
Blackburn: Now, some of that lake is still there. So as you, next time you passed on Classen, you’re going north toward Classen Curve, look over to the west, and the lake is still there. It’s not as big as it once was, but there’s still remnants because they can’t drain it. They’ve tried to drain that before, and it’s a natural lake.
Doughtery: And there was there was some talk when the fourth park had been purchased, which became Will Rogers Park, and some people said, you already have Belle Isle. It’s close enough. And they said, no, that’s private sector. Even though people can go, the bond was that there would be four public parks open and accessible for everyone. And so there was some consternation between having that park and build and buying the old dairy farm that turned into it.
Thompson: Well yeah. Let’s talk about Will Rogers Park. How do we get that park? And, you know, that park seems unique to me because it has the greenhouse there, you know, rose gardens. Very beautiful. How do we get to that park? And one of the things I want to get into also is the WPA in these parks.
Doughtery: So I, Why don’t I just start talking a little about the park itself? Of course, the 1909 bond issue, it’s going to be the fourth one. It’s set. Nobody really did anything. There was talk about just in Belle Isle, but then they turned around and said, no, we’re going to buy that old dairy farm. And there was an old dairy farm with two old elm trees on it, and the story and a creek that went through it, which would have come through bush hills and on down there, kind of part of the tributaries of the Deep Fork. And so they had bought that. The first tree nursery was Woodson Park, because it was close to the river, and then they needed to put trees along the parkway. But they were having a problem, of course, then the depression comes, the Dust Bowl, but at the same time you have the Oklahoma City oil fields. So you kind of have the good and the bad all coming down at once. And they turned around and they hired on Anton Classen and had hired a Henry Walters from Kansas to finish some things for his house, and Henry Walters and then, of course, he was so involved in the parks and saw the value of this gentleman that he, he was a horticulturalist and landscape gardener at that time, and he turned around, and they hired him as the first parks horticulturalist. And he said, well, let’s do something at Will Rogers Park. One is nobody had done anything there, and it was kind of odd. So that’s when the gardens and you know, you had kind of a trifecta. USDA did not know what to do with these trees. Everybody wanted trees. They thought we’re going to bring in what we’ve been doing in the East Coast. What was doing on the East Coast did not work in these alkaline soils, and there were so many. I have big collection of the old agricultural yearbooks, and it’s so neat to read through. And it said, “This godforsaken land. You can’t ever grow one tree.” Yeah, and, and you look at just what were the real native trees of Oklahoma County? It’s very limited in terms of what really would survived. It was a prairie.
Blackburn: Hilly along a tributary of a river or a creek.
Doughtery: So you had kind of three people. You had up at Woodward. They had to put in a USDA test station. Then at Stillwater, they had the test station with Frank Wal, and then Henry Walters here in the city. And they’d be sharing all this information, and all of them were sitting there trying to figure out, because we get into the Dust Bowl, and they’re trying to find anything to grow to make the windbreak. So the parks were working hand-in-hand with USDA and everything on there. And Will Rogers became kind of a hub. The greenhouse started at Will Rogers, I mean, at Wheeler Park down there. And then when the floods, they moved it to the fairgrounds, which is where Douglass High School was at 10th and Martin Luther King, and they moved it there. But because of the oil play, the fumes and vibrations were so much that within two years, the glass was all breaking from the vibrations and the fumes. They mothballed it, took it down, took parts of it, moved it to Will Rogers Park, and then resurrected it at Will Rogers Park. And there was actually a fire there during World War II. And they had to, I guess it was before that, and they had to wait till the end of World War II, and the parks actually rebuilt the greenhouse there. But Henry Walters was such a horticulturalist, was so gifted, and that whole team, and at the same time, WPA and CCC with working hand-in-hand.
Blackburn: That’s a nice transition, Brian, because Henry Walter was there on the staff, and he was one of those guys that would just work day and night.
Doughtery: He lived there.
Blackburn: He lived on the site. Raised his family. Brian has interviewed his daughter. And so you have Henry Walter as an asset. In, you know, government, we know who our assets are. We have properties, we have collections. We have people who can get things done. Well, Henry Walter was one of those who could get things done. Well, suddenly, here comes the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, elected in 1932, takes office in ’33, trying to put people back to work. You eventually get the Works Progress Administration and the Public Works Administration. So PWA, WPA. Well, in Oklahoma, “Alfalfa Bill” Murray is our governor, doesn’t want any of that federal stimulus. So no, no, keep them out. So in ’35, we don’t have any WPA projects. But what we do get are the CCCs, the Civilian Conservation Corps. It was administered by the US Army. They were the ones who would build the camps. They would work with the Park Service to design improvements. They would work with labor organizations to decide who were on the welfare rows, who needed work, and they would put these teams. Well, when that started, Oklahoma City said, we want some camps. So you got two of the CC camps at Lincoln Park and one camp at Will Rogers Park. Henry Walter would work with the with the National Park Service designers. And we don’t know exactly who said draw that line there. Let’s do this. But as a collaboration, they put together the design for basics of what you have now. Henry Walter was the architect of that site, wouldn’t you say?
Doughtery: That’s right.
Blackburn: But CCCs came, and they had like a couple of hundred people, and these guys were out. They would say, well, we don’t want any slope going down to the creek. That’s more than two feet per six feet or whatever the elevation was. So they get out, and they wanted to make work. So instead of bringing in machinery, guys with picks and shovels and making work and improving, planting trees, improving the pond, building a dam, creating recreational opportunities. And Henry Walter was there with enough sense about what will grow around these lakes and working with the Park Service designers and the CCC resources, and then later the PWA and WPA would come in, and the rose garden. Brian, the rose garden.
Doughtery: I think the rose garden, and when you think about the youth, the WPA and the CCC, you get the bones right. And then the youth, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, they all started getting in these tree movement. There was enough known then from the Dust Bowl and what was going to grow and what wasn’t that you had a lot of collaboration going on where they would plant all these trees in these parks that that were treeless, that needed trees. And so you had a lot of that too, started coming up. And then the rose garden. And at that time, it’s kind of surprised me because they call them rosaries, that they wanted a community rosary. Well, a rosary is the rose garden. And this was a big thing to turn around and to get it, and I mean, Will Rogers Park, they wanted roses. And, you know, I had a professor in school, and he gave an exam one time. What was the cheapest plant per color day and for parks? And which was the most expensive plant per color day for your blooming time? And the next day we go in to get the answers. The cheapest plant was the cannas. Oklahoma City had canna, and at that time they were called canna lilies. All over the boulevards had cannas because they were maintainable, they were manageable, they multiplied. And then what was the most expensive plant? It was the rose and the azalea. And so, you know, that was more for the elite, but people wanted it. And I think one reason that the rose garden did so much when Will Rogers passed away in the plane accident and they didn’t really know what they were going to name it, and then they said, “What about Will Rogers?” Because we had a Wiley Post Park, and they named it Will Rogers. When they did that, they asked . Mrs Will Rogers if she’d like to be involved, and she was the honorary chairperson for collecting the roses. I think that was as much why the success because he had millions of roses came in from around the country, and nobody would make rose gardens with solid roses because of diseases and all. But usually it was you had so many roses, and then you had all the other cast of plants that made the rose garden look good. Well, in ours, we did it, and we had so many weather events. The freeze of ’56, freeze of ’83, we had so many that would wipe out so many. So the rose garden was always a challenge.
Blackburn: And in the WPA and the CCs, you can still see the remnants of of what they did. If you’ve ever been to the Zoo Amphitheatre for a concert, that was built with make-work projects. If you go to the amphitheater at Will Rogers Park, the rose garden, all of the sandstone structures that beautiful work there. If you go to Lincoln Park, you see remnants of some of their work throughout the place. I take people to places on Lincoln Park Golf Course, and you say, “Oh, yeah, that was put in by the CC boys.” And they did a lot of improvements. And the zoo. The zoo had been moved from Wheeler Park in 1923 after a major flood. They saved most of the animals, I think they lost only one head of something, but they they stored them at the State Fair Park, which was considered a city park, still is technically run by the fair board, but they kept it there, then finally said no, let’s take the zoo. Instead of trying to go back to this floodplain, let’s take it up to Lincoln Park. And that’s when the zoo moved to Lincoln Park in 1923. And then, it gets a slow start. They had, in the book, you’ll see the characters. So Leo Blundell, one of my favorite characters, I discovered I never knew about Uncle Leo, but he was huge among the kids of Oklahoma City raising money for the zoo. Then here comes the make-work stuff with the resources to actually build infrastructure. When Brian and I were growing up, if you went to the zoo, and it was free then, you had grottoes where the animals were down below. you could there were three rows of wooden posts and you’d look down. Those are all built by the make-work programs. And the grottoes, the old bathhouse that was down on the lake where people would swim, the make-work program really transformed Oklahoma City parks.
Doughtery: And the stone for those were all mined here locally. I think they said within three miles of where it was. So it’s really an interesting, when you see how they made, you know, really made something happen.
Blackburn: One last thing. Excuse me. One last thing here that has a major impact—cash. Yeah, you can get lots of people, but you got to sustain it. So where’s the cash kind of coming from to hire the staff, to get the raw materials, to feed the horses and mules? Well, the Oklahoma City oil field came in December of 1928 at Southeast 59th and Bryant. Well, it moved to the north, right through one of those four corner parks that we now know as Trosper. And there were so many oil to it. We have the figures in the book, like 270 wells were drilled just in Trosper. That was city property. The City of Oklahoma City was getting the royalties. So you have these gushers that are coming in thousands of barrels a day. All that money is flowing into the city coffers. People are saying, well, this was, this came from city park. Let’s put it back in the city parks. So suddenly you have a stream of revenue. And so the park advocates like Donald Gordon and others would say, hey, let’s take some of that and improve these other parks, and then develop neighborhood parks to take the old brick pit on McKinley, which was a death hazard. Kids were dying. They’re swimming in these old brick pits, and so they use some of that money. Others got involved. They cleared out the water, they made parks. And so you get these other parks scattered around the city with the stream of revenue coming out of Trosper, largely, but also State Fair Park. One reason they would move the state fair to the west side in 1954 was because there were so many oil wells and derricks by that time, storage and pumpers on the state fairgrounds because of the oil, but that was revenue coming in. So the good and the bad was there with the oil.
Thompson: I wanted to get a little bit into the African American experience with the parks. And, you know, we know Oklahoma was segregated with Jim Crow laws. And, what was the opportunity for African Americans to enjoy parks during the era of segregation?
Doughtery: There was a lot of, around the country, you had schools, and you had parks. And they were kind of trying to work together. You know, you had monitored parks in the 1930s around the country where they would say that in the ’50s we turned around and we said, hey, let’s work out a deal between the city parks, and we’ll maintain the parks through the city, and then the schools will provide oversight and programing to the parks during the summer. I thought that was fantastic. I talked to a number of people about the segregation and about the different Negro parks that existed, and they said, you know, our home, a lot of it was at the high school down there by Douglass High School and all and down by Washington Park, and they had phenomenal bands and drill teams and football and all that. But they had their designated parks, but they were also very proud of them and took care of them.
Thompson: Would they have been allowed to go to one of the other parks, like one of the four main parks?
Doughtery: I don’t know how much. Go ahead.
Blackburn: They might have a day out of the week where they would have for the zoo, a person who, at the time, they would say “of color.” So an African American could go to the zoo on that designated day when it was only African Americans. The leadership of the majority of Oklahoma City people said, no. Strict segregation. You go to this school over here. The white kids will go to these schools over here, churches, shopping, movie theaters. Well, that was Deep Deuce was the heart of the commercial district. But then you had the parks down on the river. Washington Park is along the North Canadian riverbeds. And so you, and some of that park is still there today. My son played soccer there in the 1990s. But, African Americans were limited on what they could do, and that would be the rule of law until the 1960s when Brian and I were in high school, we were still dealing with the problems of segregation, and it included parks.
Thompson: Moving forward a little bit as we get ready to wrap up, more into the modern era, we get the era of the Myriad Gardens. And then, of course, the big, ambitious park that just opened a couple of years ago, which is Scissortail Park, which came about when they were able to move the interstate and with the renaissance of downtown and the MAPS projects. But what has that done for the city of Oklahoma City and surrounding area?
Doughtery: I think it's been tremendous. I mean, when you look at 1960, 1958, when Oklahoma City goes from, what, 50 square miles to 500 square miles, that was kind of the birth of the, what you would call the greenbelt in private development. The city said, we don't have money for these parks. If you want it, you're going to have your own greenbelt. So greenbelts kind of took, so it was kind of a quasi park. As you go on through, there was a time where some people said, we just want athletic parks. We just want this kind of park. That didn't work very well either. And so it kind of circled back around, and there was support, but then there wasn't support. MAPS was huge. When Ron Norick, when Mayor Norick and that group turned around and did that and said, we're going to pay as we go, and we're going to really identify some things, and there will be something for everybody. And so with that, it, you know, you started seeing things after what Myriad Gardens. You start seeing the river get water in it. You saw which used to be north or south. Now all at once it's north and south and we're talking. You start seeing development around there, and then Myriad turns into a big success. Scissortail is going to start, and this is about quality of life. This is about going back to the community. But at the same time, you look back at that original vision of Olmsted and health and well-being of the community, and you look at the number of people out at Scissortail walking all the time. You look at all the activities. So I think it's come full circle and everything's interconnected. You know, when things happen on the outside of the city, you think, will it affect parks? Yeah it does. It affects funding streams. I remember it was 1998. I was called by risk management at Stillwater, and they had read some articles and said, Brian, we don't know about taking your plant material class to Will Rogers anymore because we're really concerned about the safety and health of, I mean, of your students, and you sit there, and we made a major move then to get it on historical preservation lift to really do it. And it's so neat that here are representatives wanting to know about the beauty of Will Rogers, because at that time it wasn't. So they go through their ebbs and flows. The piece of property is the same, and it's whether we've continued to maintain it. It's not like you buy a new house, and you just abandon this. Those always have to have some new life brought into them and leadership and support.
Blackburn: And what you'll find in the book, Trait, is that the story of the parks, suburban parks, inner city parks reflect the story of Oklahoma City. As Brian said, the annexation of ’58, ’59, ’60 just overnight expansion to a suburban city already. And then the highways come in and the ’60s, the interstates, and basically downtown is gutted. Well, that's why we have urban renewal starting in ’58 is the first grant. And you see the first changes by ’64 and the first new buildings in ’68 and in the ’70s with Myriad Convention Center, and all of that is happening. People say, wait a minute, we got to do something downtown. Well, there's one man, Dean McGee, just as we had an Anton Classen or a Henry Waller. We had Dean McGee, head of Kerr-McGee, one of the founders. He and the Gaylords, E. L. and E. K. together, and Harvey Everson. A few others would have been making decisions for the city. Well, Dean McGee wanted a downtown park. He had seen gardens in Europe. He said we need something downtown. And through his force of will, running the Urban Renewal Authority, he said, we're going to have a downtown garden, and we are going to have a botanical tube where we can grow year-round in a place that is really hard to grow anything. We're going to, we're going to control the environment, artificially, and have a place for people to go year-round to see greenery. Well, it took him until 1988 to finish all of that because it slowed the depression and the second recession starting in ’82, ’85. But then that asset is there when you get to a new generation of Ray Ackerman wanting to do something with the river, with Ron Norick wanting to do something with the inner city, MAPS in ’93 would be transformative, because then you had money to put in to the downtown area, including Myriad Gardens. Then you get another leader like Larry Nichols, who decides, hey, my oil company, Devon, is doing really well, and I'm going to stay downtown because he looks up to Dean McGee, is kind of his mentor, and he says, I'm going to stay downtown, and now I'm going to build a 54-story building with $111 million in TIF money. But with his community spirit, Larry Nichols almost alone would say this. His board had to approve it, of course, but it was his vision. He says, let's spend that entire $111 million downtown, improving the area around the Devon Tower. He used none of that for his own building, but it was to go in and improve the streets, to go in and help with Myriad Gardens, redesigning it. Then others would put, and then here would come Mick Cornett who saw a need to connect to the south side with the north side. When Brian and I were growing up, you were either a silky or you were a roughneck. If you were south of the river, you were a roughneck from Capitol Hill, a packing town, or the oil patch. North side, you were silky from John Marshall or Northwest Classen. And he says that's not healthy. We've got to pull the community together, use the river as the glue. And so with Scissortail, it's no accident that it actually hops over the river. And you have park on the south side, park on the north side. Wheeler was all on the north side. Most of the Washington was all on the north side. Very few parks south side. But suddenly you get this series of leaders connecting the dots of development and seeing an opportunity, some funding, the right leadership, the right decisions. Until today, we have beautiful suburban parks like Martin Nature Park. On the south side, we have Earlywine, named after the family that farmed all that country down there, but Earlywine Park. And so you have the suburban parks, but then we have this beautiful urban park and this combination. And then neighborhood parks, and they're just starting on MAPS 4 with investing in neighborhood parks. Memorial Park, where I live two blocks from Memorial, walked there last night, is that there's going to be new investments there because we as a community, parks are important, and we are willing to invest, and not just to build, but to sustain. So there is an endowment for Myriad Gardens today. Debbie and I are members of that foundation. And so it's a matter of how can we get the resources to build, the right leadership to make the right decisions? And we end the book with the story of Red Ridge. Is it Red Ridge, right Brian? But, the Kirkpatrick Family Foundation, largely Chris Keesee, wanted to buy a large 133-acre, really a park that was privately owned that went back to one of the early families in Oklahoma City, only three houses on the Deep Fork River, and they bought it. Well, we end the story with an epilogue, is that if you take good leadership, good planning, sustainability, you can do great things. And that's what's happening at that park now. We've learned our lessons. Well this book is a blueprint for the way to go forward with what has happened, the problems, the opportunities, the leaders, how we need to think of this as a community investment. And it seems to be working and hopefully will in the future.
Thompson: Well, this is a great book, and I appreciate all of your hard work for both of you in getting it out there. When is it released, and where can people find it?
Doughtery: I think it will be released within the next week.
Blackburn: Yeah, March 20.
Thompson: Okay.
Blackburn: It will be available to the public, and it'll be in bookstores. And the name is real complicated. It's the Oklahoma City Parks: A History.
Thompson: So you're for sure going to know what it's about.
Blackburn: We went through a variety of options on that and finally came up with that. It's just, keep it simple.
Thompson: That's right. Well, Brian, we have just enjoyed our conversation with you here today. Thank you for being here.
Doughtery: Thank you very much.
Thompson: Well, Bob, this has been great. And we will, we'll wrap it up for today, but I'll look forward to our next one.
Blackburn: Well, thank you, Trait. Good job. And as always, you're doing a great job with the Historical Society. And congratulations on what's happening now at OKPOP, Will Rogers Memorial, lots happening around the state. A new director here of your state museum, Nicole Harvey, that I know well. She was my right-hand person for many years, but Nicole is going to do a great job for you. And I'm really pleased that she's in a position to make a difference.
Thompson: I am too, she's wonderful. Okay, folks, we'll see you for the next one. You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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