Most of these named trails were championed by a single individual. For the Ozark Trail it was William Hope Harvey, author, financial theorist and one time presidential candidate.
Harvey had built a large resort near Rogers, AR, in 1901 called "Monte Ne". In 1914 the railroad that serviced Harvey’s resort went bankrupt and was abandoned. Harvey decided the only way to continue to get people to his resort was to promote automobile travel. He formed and promoted the Ozark Trail which radiated out from Rogers ultimately linking cities and towns from St. Louis to Roswell, NM.
Remnants of the trail can still be found. Seven trail markers, 21 foot tall concrete obelisks, remain in Stroud and Langston, Oklahoma; in Dimmit, Wellington, Tulia and Tampico, Texas and in Lake Arthur, New Mexico. There are also old roadways, both paved and unpaved, old bridges and even the remains of Monte Ne. It has all the makings of a motorcycle adventure!
THE OKLAHOMA OBELISK’S
I decided to start with the two obelisks here in Oklahoma. It would be an easy loop out of Oklahoma City on Old Route 66 to Stroud; north on OK 99 to OK33; then west to Langston. An easy Sunday afternoon ride.
When I arrived in Stroud a quick up and down Main Street yielded a cute little tourist court on the east end of town,
the world famous Rock Café
and the Skyliner Motel at the east end,
But no obelisks. So I stopped in at Kid’s Phillips 66 gas station for directions.
The clerk didn’t know what I was talking about. So I described the obelisk to her. “Oh you mean the monument!” she exclaimed.
She didn’t know how to find it. So as customers lined up behind me, she called her husband on her cell phone. When he answered she said, “This guy is looking for the monument. Can you tell him how to get there?” and handed me the phone.
His instructions led me to the west end of town and south a mile and a half on a dirt road to the obelisk.
Apparently area youth regularly cover it with graffiti without ever knowing its significance.
The Stroud marker was so easy to find I figured that I wouldn’t have a problem finding the Langston marker. Even though it would be dark by the time I got there.
“Yeah, it’s somewhere in a neighborhood in town,” the clerk at the quick stop in Langston told me. “I don’t know exactly what street it’s on, but town’s not that big.”
Hmmm. A guy on a motorcycle riding up and down the streets of a small Oklahoma town . . . after dark. I opted to head on back to Oklahoma City and try again another day. Good thing. When I got home and turned on the news, they were running a story about a shooting in Langston!
I began planning my DAYLIGHT ride back to Langston.
I talked to a man that lives near the Stroud marker and, although he had no idea of the Ozark Trail, he told me that the marker stood where the original town of Stroud used to be before a fire burned it down in 1918.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I thought the same thing but the National Park Service told me it had been researched and that sometime in the 1920s the marker had been moved from the intersection of state Highway 99 and Route 66 to that location.
DeleteGood read. I'm in Oklahoma on business and am going to look up my section of the trail in Hobart, OK.
ReplyDeleteThanks. The trail in Hobart heads East off US 183 where OK 9 heads West to bypass town. It's County Road 1308 and connects US 183 to US 54. I haven't ridden that road yet, but I know it's black top with center stripes. My guess is the OT went from Hobart to Gotebo on that route.
ReplyDelete