By John Sutter
When I was up in the Oklahoma Panhandle a couple of weeks ago covering the drought, I decided to drop by Kenton, an out-of-the-way place that sits at the foot of Black Mesa, and is the only place in Oklahoma that goes by Mountain Time.
In Kenton, they call it “slow time.” This has all sorts of quirky implications for an independent-minded place like Kenton. It’s especially interesting, though, that Kenton isn’t technically on Mountain Time. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, which keeps track of such things, the town is on Central Time, just like the rest of Oklahoma.
For some reason, long before anyone can remember, Kenton decided to switch. The change has stuck, and even the postmaster in town goes by “slow time.”
I bring this up on the environment blog because there’s much ecotourism to be done in Kenton. It’s supposedly a birder’s paradise — with entirely different species from the rest of Oklahoma. And you can hike local canyons and to the top of Black Mesa, which is the highest point in Oklahoma. The land is volcanic, and so there’s a creek bed where dinosaur tracks are frozen in time.
When you drive west from Boise City to Kenton, the land seems to instantly change — prairie to canyon-land in a snap. It’s little-known, but Oklahoma has some of the greatest ecological diversity of any state in the nation. Depending on how you slice it, there are 8 to 12 distinct ecosystems in the state. They’re worth seeing for yourself.
(PS: I got the idea to drop by Kenton when I stumbled onto a blog at okaycity.com.)
