Sunday, October 1st, 2006
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A gold rush without the gold
by E. Montgomery
(Clipping from The Norman Transcript, Sept. 18, 2006)
The Western Oklahoma gold rush at the turn of the century had everything a gold rush calls for except the gold.
"Nationwide," Ross E. Harlan wrote for The War Chief quarterly, "many newspapers and observers likened the Wichita (Mountains) gold rush to the huge mining bonanzas of Cripple Creek and Central City, Colo., the Klondike and the California gold fields."
Harlan is a member of the Indian Territory Posse of Oklahoma Westerners in Oklahoma City, sponsor of The War Chief."
Opening of the southwestern Indian Territory reservations to homesteaders in 1901 started the boom, but legends of mines and caches left by Spanish explorers centuries before had drawn some treasure hunters for years.
In 1881 when a prospector brought "a substantial nugget of solid silver" to Fort Sill, Harlan wrote, soldiers from the fort stampeded into the mountains to file claims, and it took an order from the secretary of war in the president's cabinet to get them back to their military jobs.
"Shafts were sunk from one end of the mountain area to the other," Harlan said. "Arrastras (ore crushers), gold and silver mills and smelters were constructed. In the period 1901-1904, 2,500 shafts were sunk in the mountains. A total of more than 6,000 claims were staked during the boom."
An estimated 20,000 men worked the mines and other operations. Boom towns sprang up overnight with such names as Lightning Gulch, Doris, Poverty Gulch and Meers. You may have eaten a huge Meers hamburger.
"The only legacy of the exciting boom camps is one old store building still standing and operating as a cafe at Meers, near the north base of Mount Sheridan," Harlan wrote. "Meers was one of the most advanced boom towns, with a population of abut 300. It boasted two hotels, two doctors and numerous commercial enterprises as well as a weekly newspaper, the Mount Sheridan Miner.
The boom played out about 1907, Harlan reports, but the decline had started several years earlier.
"Though some nuggets were found and many loads of ore were processed in the smelters and cyanide mills," the article says, "the quantities were never enough to sustain the boom for more than a few years."
(How many of those nuggets were planted by mine owners looking for buyers we will never know.)
All that's left of the gold rush is abandoned shafts and the scattered ruins of mills and smelters.
And, Harlan writes, the stubborn dreamers who won't give up. The legends about hidden treasures that preceded the gold rush still lure dreamers to the mountains.
"They believe the pot of gold is to be found," Harlan says, "not at the end of the rainbow but in the immensity of the Wichitas.
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| Monday, January 23rd, 2006
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Beloved lump Mount Williams will be coming down so
[Clipping from The Norman Transcript, January 2006] The days of Mount Williams, the dirt knob along Interstate 35, are numbered. The commercial development on that corner is proceeding and the familiar mound will soon be gone.
The university plans to install a monument there honoring the thousands of sailors who passed through Norman. It will tell visitors the role the two Norman bases played in the training of sailors.
A grass fire near the hill last week brought lots of attention from I-35 motorists. The fire department snuffed it out quickly but not before some serious rubbernecking slowed down interstate traffic.
About once a week, the newsroom gets a call from someone claiming the bulldozers are lined up getting ready to reduce the Norman landmark to a pile of brown fill dirt placed in a farmer's ravine.
The hill served as a backstop for a Navy firing range and was a familiar landmark for pilots coming back to Max Westheimer field. The dirt reportedly came from dirt work on the nearby runways.
Williams was an early day Naval base leader.
Time has taken its toll on the mound. It has survived more than 60 years of rain and wind, fraternity letters and high school dates. As a kid, we dug lead out of the hill. A friend recently celebrated the anniversary of his first date with a return to the mount. It was a little harder to climb 30 years after high school but they still did it.
Norman residents have shown their creative side with suggestions to me as to how it should be preserved.
One man wanted to mount replicas of the planes flown here atop tall steel spikes to remind I-35 motorists of the thousands of pilots who trained at Norman in the 1940s.
Another suggested the mound be re-shaped as a dinosaur to direct tourists to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Still another wanted to shape the hill like a gorilla, calling attention to the nearby "Mile of Cars."
As a child the mountain reminded me that we were home from car trips.
We'd see the hill and know that our travels were soon over. Our parents would wake us up and point to the hill as a sign that our own familiar beds couldn't be far away.
Andy Rieger 366-3543 editor@normantranscript.com
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| Monday, January 23rd, 2006
| Friday, October 21st, 2005
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Erica B's Memorial Service
Thank you to Leo and Betty for sharing this.
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We had a very nice trip to Concordia and the rare opportunity to visit with relatives was also very special. After the memorial service the group went to Biffels Barbeque and had lunch together. Several of us shared special memories of Aunt Erica. Roger and Ellsbeth K----- invited all to their home afterwards. Great trip and it brought many memories of past reunions and other family memories.
Leo
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| Thursday, October 20th, 2005
| Tuesday, June 14th, 2005
| Monday, June 13th, 2005
| Friday, June 10th, 2005
| Friday, April 8th, 2005
| Saturday, March 26th, 2005
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A Good Husband
We should all be so lucky as to have a husband like Terri Schiavo's. He could have walked away from her a decade ago, and let her parents continue their well-intentioned but unwanted vigil by her side. That would have been the easy way out, but he did not take it.
He knew that his wife would not have wanted to remain in a vegetative state, and he loved her enough to keep her wishes alive.
He should be commended for his dedication and his unconditional love for Terri Schiavo.
Ballwin
(Letter to the Editor, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch)
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