COLUMN: Our forgotten history | Oklahoma

By David Christy

Enid News & Eagle

I’m going to take us all again on a journey via Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine, to a time earlier than ghost cities truly turned ghost cities in Oklahoma, each earlier than and after statehood.

When actual individuals walked the dusty streets and trails and paths we now take as a right.

I’ve had a fascination with what got here earlier than us after I was only a younger lad in grade faculty, when my dad instructed me a narrative about early-day Waukomis.

My grandpa and my dad — R. Jack Christy Sr. and Jr. — bought the previous weekly Oklahoma Hornet newspaper in 1950, and our household ran the print store till 2002, upon the dying of my dad.

I used to be digging round behind our previous North Main Street constructing at some point when my dad got here out and stated to watch out, that I would dig up a skeleton.

It appears that within the dusty pages of post-Land-Run-of-1893 Waukomis, our previous constructing had been the location of a saloon, and somebody had been shot in entrance of it out on the street, and buried in an unmarked grave out again.

That story positive bought my consideration, and it took off in my younger thoughts to the purpose that wherever I lived — within the yards of my a number of houses over time — that digging within the filth for no matter cause would possibly unearth some kind of history, some remnant the individuals who lived lengthy earlier than me had left behind.

Now, this historic intrigue for me reached a peak in later years after I was a Civil War dwelling history re-enactor, and our Oklahoma unit —the Trans-Mississippi Rifles — was camped at previous Fort Washita in far Southern Oklahoma.

Several of us had gone on a hike west of the previous fort, down a steep hill right into a thicket of brush and scrub timber, and found a weather-beaten wooden signal that learn Hatsboro, with as I keep in mind a number of previous stone foundations of a way back deserted settlement close to the fort.

Hatsboro — also called Rugglesville — was a small city, if you happen to can name it that, west of the vital Oklahoma fort throughout a creek close to the Chickasaw Indian Agency, whose inhabitants had been the households of troopers and fort workers.

Of course, the previous fort was in-built 1842 by the federal authorities because the farthest southwest outpost within the nonetheless fledgling, nonetheless increasing United States, strategically overlooking the Red River and Texas.

I additionally keep in mind, after a heavy rainstorm, discovering dozens of sq. nails, window weights and different gadgets that had been uncovered by the storm, simply laying there on the bottom in entrance of what had been the foundations of buildings from the fort — washed up as if to attempt to inform a long-forgotten story. History had given up just a few clues.

Certainly Hatsboro is certainly one of simply many ghost cities in Oklahoma, and lots of extra had been to return and go as history unfolded right here on the crimson earth plains.

Another time, history jumped up and bit me whereas I used to be ending up serving to battle a hearth with Waukomis Fire Department, on what was then the previous Rock Island railroad line, slightly north of Bison.

Several of us had been strolling the railroad line, searching for scorching spots and kicking still-smoldering previous railroad ties away from the tracks once we stumbled on a marker — a grave subsequent to the tracks — of an unidentified railroad employee who had died and been buried there.

It was a shocking piece of history for us, one thing you don’t ever anticipate finding, however that provides you pause and makes you suppose again into history previous.

I do know that there are any variety of ghost cities in Oklahoma — many proper in Garfield County — together with Barr and Del Norte, south of Drummond; Cropper, north of Breckinridge; Jonah, northwest of Enid; Luella, east of Fairmont; Maxwell northeast of Covington, and Potter, southeast of the identical present-day city.

And, there may be Wildwood, within the far southwest nook of the county, midway between Ames and Oklahoma 132.

All had been as soon as cities or no less than communities. All had a history of people that lived there, died there, and who at one time farmed or thrived in some long-forgotten avocation in early-day Oklahoma, each pre- and post-statehood.

These communities at one time drew individuals to them for no matter cause, however an absence of railroads, an absence of excellent water or roads — an absence of one thing — made them abandon these communities.

I can let you know that there was extra history misplaced to us than now we have written down.

We, as Oklahomans and Americans, lose unwritten history each single day.

It typically lives on in recollections, however as individuals move, history is misplaced to us and solely lives on within the weathering gravestones of our cemeteries — passing on into forgotten history.

Christy is news editor on the Enid News & Eagle. Visit his column weblog at www.tinyurl.com/Column-Blog.