Grand Prix car race not new idea for Oklahoma City
While news reports abound with the proposal of a Bricktown Grand Prix auto race, the idea of racing high speed automobiles on Oklahoma City streets is not a new one.
“When the whir and whizz of automobiles, running in international races on the asphalt road known as the Grand boulevard of Oklahoma City, disturb the stillness of 1911 then the park board may rest–and not ’til then.
In their (the park board members) dream, or rather plan–for it is mapped out now, and grading is underway–they have conceived of a road 200 feet wide, interlaid with trees and flowers, an endless path of unobstructed ease for those who would drive and drive and drive.”
The Oklahoman Dec 12, 1909, story further described their dream:
“On this primrose path there will be none of the grade crossings, nor the halting unpleasantness of hucksters, pedestrians, sand piles and street cars that befuddle and make stuffy the streets of cities. Overhead and underneath, the vehicles which pass the course of the boulevard will go over viaducts and through tunnels.
On the auto-course road rules alone governing directions will restrict. Not only will there be no limit to speed but driving to the best power of the machine will be encouraged.”
As history and current experience shows, Grand Boulevard never quite reached the high expectations of those early leaders.
When Oklahoma City finally staged the Southwest Sweepstakes Race in April 29, 1915, the racers, including the famed Barney Oldfield, did not race on Grand Boulevard. The racetrack, 2.404 miles long, was laid out on Linwood Boulevard. The winner of the 200-mile race was “Wild Bob” Burman, and there were only two slight accidents. Burman received $2,500.
When Grand Prix racing comes to Bricktown, the prize money will be greater, but the excitement for the crowds will be much the same.
–Mary Phillips
“Driving Miss Daisy” Oklahoma style
“Driving Miss Daisy,” an award-winning movie from 1989, chronicled the relationship of a chauffeur and his elderly woman passenger over a period of many years.
The Oklahoma version played out over several months in 1910, and it was a story of young love.
In the early days of the automobile, people would often take a touring car and see the country. Twenty-year-old George Gibson came to Oklahoma from California chauffeuring a group on their way to Memphis, Tenn. In Oklahoma City, the group was entertained at a banquet at the Chamber of Commerce and it was there George saw Helen Adkins, the young (16-year-0ld) daughter of city attorney Charles Adkins, who was making her society debut.
Picking up the story from The Oklahoman, Feb. 8, 1910: “His first glimpse of her satisfied him that she was the only girl he could ever love, he says, and as a result he turned the touring party over to another man, and remained in Oklahoma City. For several weeks he showered his attentions on the girl, meanwhile casting about for some employment.”
“Then the girl’s mother, liking the young fellow’s looks, offered him a position as driver of her new automobile. The position was accepted. Constantly thrown with Gibson in drives, and in other ways, the girl lost her heart to him, but her father, when approached on the subject of the couple’s marriage would not hear of it.” (No doubt saying they were much too young.)
But love would not be denied, so the couple took the train to Guthrie, lied about their ages to get a license and were married before a justice of the peace. (Legal age was 21 for men and 18 for women.)
“Still fearful of her father’s anger, and desiring to pacify him before seeing him, the girl called up from Guthrie and telling her father what had been done, asked whether or not she should return home. Hiding his surprise and anger, he told her to come home …”
Then, her father called the police and told them his daughter had been abducted and was on the Guthrie train with her abductor. The police were waiting and took George to the police station, where he was met by a deputy and promptly taken to the county jail.
“Before he had been in jail an hour, Adkins called over the telephone, requesting his release. Shortly after, the pretty young wife appeared, and with tear-stained face, waited, while Jailer Skaggs tried to get County Attorney Reardon by the telephone to have him approve the release. Finally, she drove to the county attorney’s house, roused him from bed and got him to telephone the necessary order to the jail. Gibson was released shortly after midnight, and with his wife and mother-in-law, drove away.”
I checked the newspaper archive to see if our couple lived happily ever after and I was disappointed to find The Oklahoman for Sept. 15, 1911, announcing “LOVE DREAM ENDS.”
“Less than two years ago, Oklahoma City society was astounded to hear that pretty little Miss Helen L. Adkins, daughter of Charles H. Adkins, one of the city’s prominent attorneys, had eloped with George W. Gibson, a young man from California, who was acting as her father’s chauffeur. Now Love’s young dream has ended, for suit was filed in superior court Thursday, asking that the marriage be annuled, as neither of the parties were of legal age at the time.”
The story continues: “For a while the little society miss found a chauffeur charming as a lover, yet it was a different proposition to depend on him for a living and love at the same time.”
George was last seen in Nebraska.
– Mary Phillips
Lions on the roof; and formerly in the yard
Take a good look at the state Capitol building and on each of the eight corners of the roof, you will find a winged lion.
A winged lion sits on a corner of the state Capitol building. - The Oklahoman Archives
A photograph in The Oklahoman, Jan 29, 1928, tells the story of twolions that were not destined for the Capitol roof but instead found their way to the front yard of a house in the Harndale addition of Oklahoma City.
“They stand in the front yard of the oldest house in the addition, a small Spanish type home once occupied by an official of the State Capitol Building company.”
“Early in 1917, the capitol was nearing completion. About that time an anti-British movement got afoot … Objection to the lions was voiced on the grounds that they savored of King George V or perhaps Richard the Lion Hearted. Consequently two of the brutes were spared a domeless home.”
From a June 18, 1962, story we get a slightly different story of how the lions arrived in Harndale.
In 1914, when architects Solomon Layton and his partner S. Wemyes Smith were drawing up designs for the Capitol, Smith came up with the idea of having British lions perched on the Capitol.
They were made of concrete, and when they arrived, two were flawed.
Here, the story becomes a mystery as the twolions were placed at Classen Drivenear NW 14. There, they guarded the Harnsdale neighborhood for more than 40 years.
The Harnsdale addition was developed by early day attorney and developerWilliam Fremont Harn. It was Harn who donated the land where the Capitol now stands, and possibly he was given or sold the lions in appreciation of his donation.
Regardless of how they arrived, in 1962 the Harnsdale lions were offered for sale by the executor of the estate for “$2000 and the equipment to carry off the one-ton statues.”
I searched The Oklahoman’s archives, but have yet to find who purchased the lions and where they are now.
If anyone knows, e-mail me at mphillips@opubco.com or give me call me at (405) 475-3695.
Mary Phillips
A childhood memory
When I was young, one of my absolute favorite things was visiting my grandparents.
My paternal grandmother, Stella Young, and my maternal grandparents, Dewey and Audrie Bennett, both lived on SE 21 Street. Lightning Creek separated them.
It was so much fun for a little girl to walk down to the foot bridge that spanned the creek. Not only could I visit my grandparents but I could cross the creek and look down and see all of what now would be just cast-off trash, but then was treasure, just out of reach.
Imagine my surprise when, looking for something else in The Oklahoman’s archive, I stumbled across a photograph of the very foot bridge I remembered from my childhood.
Something new in the way of bridges was swung into place across Lightning creek in Capitol Hill Tuesday when the city's home-made bridge was set up on Twenty-first street. - Copy of photograph published in The Oklahoman.
The story published March 8, 1944, tells the story of “my bridge.”
The original bridge across Lightning Creek had been destroyed earlier in the year by a tornado. With the war still ongoing, steel was unavailable, so the mother of invention took over.
“With steel for a modern bridge unavailable at this time, W. J. Booth, superintendent of the municipal garage, gathered up some salvage pipe from the Bluff creek project, welded them together, applied a new coat of paint and brought out a bridge.”
“Two men, working 10 days in the city garage, whipped out the structure at a total cost of $125 for a welding rod and material.”
The story goes on to say, “A total of 1,500 feet of pipe was used in constructing the 75-foot bridge. It is five feet, nine inches wide. A wooden flooring will be added.”
I remember the big wooden planks that made the floor of the bridge and provided my aunts, uncles and mother a shortcut to school.
The bridge is no longer there, probably a victim of the flood control measures to keep Lightning Creek in its banks.
The street is not the street I remember of houses and people. Most of the houses are gone now, but I can close my eyes and see that little girl holding her daddy’s hand walking across the old bridge.
Mary Phillips
mphillips@opubco.com
Meet Mr. Robinson
If you go downtown, at some point you will probably find yourself on Robinson Avenue. It certainly is one of Oklahoma City’s oldest streets.
A story published in The Oklahoman July 16, 1972, reported, “The morning of April 23, 1889, surveyors set up tripods and squinted through the transits. The links of surveyor chain clanked as Robinson Avenue was surveyed from Reno Road through South Oklahoma toward the North Canadian River. Marching north from Reno at Second Street, the Oklahoma Station surveyors hiked up the old Boomer ‘blue hill’ painted and perfumed by a carpet of wild violets in bloom, and Robinson Avenue stopped at a homesteader’s claim at Seventh Street. ”
“Robinson Avenue began as a dusty or muddy road, depending on the weather, a mile and a quarter long through the townsite of Oklahoma , and South Oklahoma.”
But who was it named for? A Vermonter and a man who never was a resident of Oklahoma or Oklahoma City, Albert Alonzo Robinson. Born in 1844 and raised on the edge of the Wisconsin frontier, he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1869 and began his career as a surveyor’s axeman (the man who cleared the way for the surveyor). By 1886, he was the newly promoted chief engineer for the Santa Fe railroad, and Santa Fe had obtained a federal charter to build the railroad across the Cherokee outlet and Oklahoma lands, working south from Arkansas City to what would become Purcell in the Chickasaw Nation. They started in September 1886, and by February 1887 they were at Deer Creek, OK. Many of the railroad employees were Boomers, those who settled Oklahoma Territory legally. They recognized that the railroad building was a “double blessing,” it provided a good living and kept them near the land they hoped to homestead.
The charter had a deadline of April 20, and it looked like the tracklayers had no chance to meet it.
The government sent a marshal to serve a writ on the railroad, but they didn’t reckon with Mr. Robinson. He sent his chief clerk to take over, and while he laid track and avoided the marshal, Robinson ignored all the messages to cease construction. On April 26, the tired marshal rode in to the railroad camp and told Curtis he was there to serve the writ because the work was not finished.
Curtis said, “The track is all finished, look for yourself.” The marshal agreed.
“That was the last Robinson and the Santa Fe heard of the federal writ. Old Boomers slapped each other on the back about how Robinson had saved the railroad for Oklahoma country.” The famous photograph of the Run of ‘89 shows some of the settlers arriving by train on the track that Albert Robinson made sure was laid.
During his 22-year career with Santa Fe, Albert Robinson was responsible for building more than 5,000 miles of track, the bridge over the Royal Gorge and rising to vice president of Santa Fe. When he retired as president of Mexican Central, he returned to Topeka, KS, and died in 1918.
It’s been 120 years since Robinson Avenue was surveyed and named for the Boomers’ friend, Albert Alonzo Robinson, but it is fitting that Oklahoma City’s “main street” is named for the man who made sure the railroad made it to Oklahoma.
Note: Some of Robinson’s biographical information was obtained from Internet biographies.
Amelia and her autogiro
It’s hard to miss the advertisements touting the new movie “Amelia” about pioneer woman pilot, Amelia Earhart but in the summer of 1931 Oklahomans saw the real thing.
On June 14, 1931, the Oklahoma Publishing Company arranged to have Amelia Earhart, piloting her autogiro, appear in an aerial circus at the fairgrounds to benefit the Milk and Ice Fund for undernourished and poor children.
12,000 people, my daddy included, saw Amelia flythat day. It was one of the largest crowds to see her autogiro tour of the U.S.
The newspaper described the show:
Amelia Earhart seated in the cockpit of autogiro. - From The Oklahoman Archives
Miss Earhart’s appearance, an accidental piece of showmanship, came just as the moment the crowd was letting down from the opening round of thrills. Circling the field several times, one of America’s premiere aviatrices brought the strange craft down for a beautiful landing, stopping within a few yards of the point where the wheels struck the ground.
The entire program was broadcast over WKY, Oklahoman, Times and Farmer Stockman radio station and preceding the appearance of the “backyard flying machine,” a description of the ship was broadcast. Miss Earhart, after her landing spoke briefly to the enthusiastically cheering crowd.
After her take-off, she brought the machine almost to a standstill over the field and circled a dozen times before dropping down and taking off again. Her piloting was perfect and the landings and take-offs a splendid example of the possibilities of the autogiro with its revolving wing surface.
In an editorial published June 5, 1931, The Oklahoman described the autogiro:
The autogiro is fundamentally a heavier-than-air craft, deriving its lift from the rotary movement through the air of its supporting surfaces. It differs primarily from airplanes in that its supporting surface or blades are free to move at a speed independent of the machine as a whole, thereby introducing flying characteristics hitherto impossible of accomplishment. It can take off at a low speed after a very short run and immediately assume a sharp angle of climb, can fly at either high or low speeds, and can momentarily be brought to a standstill in the air. It is capable of vertical descent at a velocity slower than one descends in a parachute. The descent is perfectly stable because of its pendular stability without oscillation, and it is so balanced that it can also be made to glide “nose down” like an airplane by a forward motion of the control. As a result of these characteristics little skill is required to finally land with virtually no forward speed and with a shock so slight as to be easily absorbed by the landing gear.
“Flying windmill” seemed to describe it fairly well, as it looked like an airplane with a helicopter’s rotor on the top.
On December 19, 1930, Amelia Earhart become the first woman autogiro pilot and she set an altitude record of over 18,000 feet.
The Milk and Ice Fund profited $3,640.29 and that June Sunday Miss Amelia Earhart had left her mark on Oklahoma City.
Dark tribute paid
On Monday Oct. 19, 1931, newspapers were announcing the death of inventor Thomas Alva Edison.
For several days the events of his life and accomplishments were reported.
Thomas Alva Edison. - Photograph provided to The Oklahoman.
On October 21, the 52nd anniversary of his perfection of the incandescent lightbulb, Edison was buried and at the request of President Herbert Hoover, a national tribute was paid by businesses and individuals dimming their lights from 9:00 p.m to 9:01 p.m.
Oklahoma City took part as was reported on Oct. 22, 1931 in The Oklahoman.
LIGHTS BLINK FAREWELL TO AGED INVENTOR
Darkness Shrouds Streets As City Pays Edison Last Tribute.
Darkness shrouded the downtown Oklahoma City from 9 to 9:01 o’clock Wednesday night as thousands paused in respect to Thomas Alva Edison.
From end to end of Main street on Broadway, First street and Robinson avenue, lights were extinguished in places of businesss, signs and street lamps.
Theater Lights Out
Theaters doused their glaring arcades and the great beacon and silhouette lights atop the First National Bank building were turned out.
Traffic at downtown corners was halted for the minute, when red-and-green signal lights were turned out. Impatient and forgetful mortorists sounded long blasts on horns, before being released by the lights.
During the day flags at schools were at half mast and in some classrooms short memorial services were held. Flags on utility company offices and plant buildings also were lowered at the hour of the funeral.
Firm closes offices
Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. offices were closed at 4 0′clock to permit employes to attend a memorial service in the Shrine auditorium.
J.S. Ross, attorney, lauded Edison and his work in a brief address. Invocation was by Rev. F.E.C. Haas, pastor of the German Lutheran church and president of the Ministerial alliance.
Music was by the company quartest and Byrne Gerhart, baritone.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 will mark the 130 anniversary of Thomas Alva Edison’s electric light.
Pause and remember the great man who gave us light and the electrical generating plants that provide power for our lives today.
An alternate view
Here’s a story published in The Oklahoman April 22, 1909 about the creation of Oklahoma City in 1899. I had never heard this version.
O(scar) A. Mitscher was an eighty-niner, the second mayor of Oklahoma City, a mercantile business owner and early day civic citizen. Here is his version of the settling of Oklahoma City.
Few, or comparatively few, of the present day Oklahoma citizens know that Oklahoma City the magnificint new state metropolis, rests upon the the ruins of a despoiled town, upon the wrecked hopes and homes of artisans and artificers whose long unquestioned right to the ground, succumbed to the white man’s might, whose hearth fires were ruthlessly trampled and scattered to the four winds, whose title to the land in which their townwas built, crumbled and toppled like the title of the wild horse, the buffalo and the cow boy; yea verily, a town existed here ahead of theis present magnificent city; the inhabitants of which were well organized in civic and civil community, peacefull and law abiding. Their police officers stood sentinel vigilantly heeding the coming and going of coyotes, cow boys, crows, owls and bats, their friends and foes, quick to welcome the former and evade the latter. The town true, was not as large as present Oklahoma City, neither had it the sky-scrapers, but the mounds , spires, avenue, and streets were readily discernible , and easily found near the present site of the Oklahoma Mill and Elavator Co.
The quiet and peace of this town sustained a shock on April 22, 1889, from which it never recovered. the advent of thousands and thousands of home seekers sent these poor rodents scurrying, not unlike the antics of the present day occupants when God in his majesty sent a black cloud through the heavens. This devastation of homes, firesides, and demolition of families, rendered all homeless, and made many orphans.
One day one of these poor homeless creatures harassed and harried lost from his fellows, blindly timorous and paralyzed with fright came running into my store, 307 Grand Avenue, surrendering his freedom, no doubt , with similar feeling experienced by man when in the act of committing self-destruction. The mental agony may have not have been quite so poignant, but the heartbeats were fully as wild and tumultuous.
A prairie dog. - The Oklahoman Archives
The little fellows’ appearance indicated unusual intelligence and respectability. It is therefore my belief that he must have held a prominent place in the social and political life of Prairie Dog Town.
He might have been a teacher in morality and dogmas, his whining and short sharp sentences while no doubt couched in choice Prairie Dog rhetoric were entirely uninteligable to me, but assuming that he was but human or at least not more than human, I knew the text of his discourse was either one of three subjects: first an appeal for something to eat; or second an appeal for rest, or third: an appeal for freedom, and restoration to his kind. Food he refused, rest he did not seem to want, hence freedom, for which more blood has been spilled than all else combined, being the topic of his pathetic appeal, naturally found response in the heart of a free American citizen.
Carefully providing for his comfort and safety , and providing myself with a conveyance, I made a trip to the flat just beyond Dead Man’s Crossing (NW 10th, south of Lake Overholser), about 12 miles west of the city, where all old timers will remember was a mammoth Prairie Dog Town, and there restored my little fugitive to his kinfolks.
This story having already exceeded my alloted space I must decline to tell what the Praire Dog said as I released him.
“A special canary department”
Here’s a light item from the July 11, 1937, Daily Oklahoman, about a yellow desperado and the policeman who captured his man …errr, his bird.
Promise of Reform Brings Release of Canary Prisoner
The police department’s prize prisoner, a yellow canary, seized on charges of obstructing duties of an officer went home Saturday minus a few feathers, chirping weakly and looking very ashamed about the whole escapade.
Booked Friday night as Mary (or John) Doe, the flying desperado was released Saturday to Mrs. Denver Burkett, 830 Northwest Fifth street, who said his name is really Jimmy and promised there would be no more of this unrestrained flitting about the house.
Mrs. Burkett identified Jimmy by the absence of two tail feathers which, she said, he lost in a forced landing behind the ice box last March.
Jack Barnett, station captain, who captured Jimmy after he annoyed officers by crying “cheep, cheep” through the station window and battering the screen with his bill, demanded an explanation of his presence there.
“Well,” Mrs. Burkett apologized, “the ice man left the door open Friday morning and he flew right out.”
Police received 20 calls Saturday from people looking for their lost canaries.
“Holy smokes,” complained Barnett, “at that rate people must lose 7,300 canaries a year. If this keeps up we’ll have to have a special canary department.”
Mary Phillips
mphillips@opubco.com
Where did those buffalo come from? New York City!
This undated archive photograph shows buffalo in the Wichita National Forest and Game Preserve
In 1907, 15 buffalo boarded a train in New York City and made the journey to the brand new state of Oklahoma.
The Wichita Forest and Game Preserve, now known as the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, was to become their home. This “gift to the people, for the express purpose of helping to preserve the American bison from ultimate extinction” originated with the director of the New York Zoological society, Dr. William T. Hornaday. He offered the bison to the secretary of agriculture, who accepted it.
After sending experts to choose the best land and fencing the land, 9 cows and 6 bulls of varying ages and representing four different blood lines traveled from New York to Cache, Oklahoma, and were hauled the last 12 miles to their new home.
The Oklahoman for Nov. 19, 1907, announced the birth of a heifer calf that was named “Oklahoma” in honor of the arrival of statehood and who joined a bull calf born about two weeks before.
According to a story dated Sept. 23, 1917, “four of the original number were lost, two dying from Texas fever and two from other causes.” The herd in 1917 numbered 94, including “the largest buffalo bull in the world. He weighs 2,800 pounds and is 10 years old. His name was Black Dog.
This photograph of Black Dog, largest buffalo in the world was published in The Oklahoman in 1917.
The herd and others in Oklahoma and across the nation have thrived so that the buffalo is no longer in danger of extinction. Nat Batchelder, Oklahoma City Zoo spokesman in 1982, said, ” That has got to be one of the ironies of nature, that an animal killed off in its natural habitat had to be sent out from New York City.”
“Among the descendents of those original 15 bison are the four animals obtained by the Oklahoma City Zoo in November 1977.”
The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, established in 1901, now maintains the bison herd at about 650 animals with the surplus being sold annually at public auction, according to their website http://www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/oklahoma/wichitamountains/
It’s popularity as a tourist destination has continued to grow, hosting more than 2 million visitors a year.
~Mary Phillips
