Stroud Marker Redeaux

MOVING OBELISKS

I first learned about the Ozark Trail while researching a Route 66 trip. Large sections of the Ozark Trail were incorporated into Route 66. The first website I found regarding the trail markers was www.drivetheost.com/pyramidsonthetra.html. Its reference to the Stroud marker says “despite being moved and covered with graffiti”. So I assumed the marker was not in its original location. Further Google searches turned up a national park service site, www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/route66/oklahoma_road_segments.html, which indicates that the marker is, in fact, in its original location and the dirt road I was on was part of the OT! From that intersection west I could drive on the ORIGINAL TRAIL into Davenport! The same NPS site showed a section of road west of Sapulpa that was also part of the Ozark Trail. At the East end of the Sapulpa section of original roadway is the Rock Creek Bridge. Built in 1924 to serve the Ozark Trail the bridge features a brick roadbed. Both sections were incorporated into Route 66 when it first came into being in 1926.

So my return trip to Langston would be a repeat of my first plan, but with the added destination of the Rock Creek Bridge outside of Sapulpa. A lot to pack into a single day! I started early.



AMERICA'S DIRT ROAD MAIN STREET

Davenport is on a 90o curve, but coming in from the west I could see where the old asphalt went straight. So I went straight, too.

The faint yellow shadow of “no passing” lines could just barely be seen on the worn roadway as I rolled past the Davenport High School Football stadium. The road signs said I was on Rd 900. When I got to the intersection of Rd 900 and Rd 3520, the asphalt turned north. But I continued straight. Two miles later I came to the intersection with Rd 3540. The obelisk is on Rd 3540. But there was no obelisk. So I turned north to find it. And I did, at the intersection with Rd 890.

I stopped to take some more photos of the obelisk and of the original roadway headed to the west when the local authorities showed up. You don’t see too many Ninjas on dirt roads in Lincoln County and he wondered what I was up to.



I told him I’d come to see the “monument” and to ride the original roadway back into Davenport. That’s when he told me about another marker he’d seen near Yale, OK on old hwy 51. This would be an EIGHTH OBELISK! He wasn’t certain what town it was in, but said he had been taking the “back way” from Yale to Fairfax when he came upon it. This makes sense as the old Ozark Trail was more a network of roads all radiating out from Northwest Arkansas and NOT a single route like the Lincoln Highway.

The road to Davenport was smooth dirt. I kept an eye peeled for a pair of stone box drain built by the local chapter of the Ozark Trail Association around 1917. If it hadn’t been for the orange markers the county put out, I might have missed them.




The east drain is fairly large with an opening close to six feet high.



The west drain is about a third the size.





Near the end of this section is the Dosie Creek Bridge. This is the 2004 bridge. It replaced the steel trussed, wood decked structure built in 1917 to support the Ozark Trail. The low red guard rails just don't compare to the grace of the gentle arches of the pony trusses of the old bridge. A sad loss.



ON TO SAPULPA!