With President Barack Obama talking public work projects as a means of handling the current recession, the impact government spending had on the Great Depression during Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal is under the microscope. While some critics may claim that President Roosevelt’s New Deal did not have a profound effect on the Great Depression, the […]
Mike Coppock
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Oklahoma City wasn’t always married to the car
Dr. George Cross, president of the University of Oklahoma, began writing a heartfelt letter to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission at his desk. It was the summer of 1946 and the new owners of the Oklahoma Railway Company had just petitioned the commission seeking to discontinue commuter rail service from Oklahoma City to Norman. EXPANDING THE […]
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Murders linked Osage Nation, FBI in the Twenties
d come forth. The agents worked under the legal umbrella of the Osage tribal police, but as told in the James Stewart movie “The FBI Story,” they desperately wanted to find a way to make the Osage killings a federal case. Then an agent discovered Roan’s body had been found on federally owned grazing land […]
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Hunt for yeti part of Oklahoma oilman’s legacy
Oklahoma oilman Tom Slick Jr. used his family fortune hunting the Loch Ness monster, bigfoot, yeti and so on throughout the Fifties. As Loren Coleman underscored in his 1989 book, “Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti,” the man was determined to solve all the riddles that seemed to have no answers. EXPEDITIONSightings of […]
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Waynoka was ‘hot’ layover in early 1900s, thanks to Lindbergh
For 18 months beginning in 1929, Waynoka was the center of one of the most ambitious transportation endeavors the nation had ever witnessed. America’s fair-haired boy, Charles Lindbergh, had been the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo, on a nonstop flight, only two years earlier. Now his goal was to send passengers across the […]
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Seminole leader advocated independent nation in 1800s
Wewoka was the location for a series of secret conferences within the Seminole Nation during the summer of 1846. The attendees did not dare let their hosts, the Creeks, learn of what they were discussing, fearing the wrath of the larger tribe. Before them stood the tall, athletic Coacoochee, spending hours trying to convince an […]
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Gov. Murray once tried to colonize Bolivia, and failed
Former Oklahoma Gov. William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray once led an army of Oklahoma families into Bolivia in the Twenties in order to set up a series of colonies. In 1922, he obtained a land grant of 42,000 acres for $1,800 on condition he settle 25 families there by the end of 1925. The colonial […]
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Fifties Okarche bank robbers escaped via plane
On April 4, 1950, a part-time Enid welder carried out a bank robbery using a stolen airplane for his getaway. The target: the Bank of Okarche. For James Robison, 29, money was growing short, and his wife was expecting. He started talking about robbing a bank to get out of debt. Robison’s talk scared his […]
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Gov. Murray once tried to colonize Bolivia, and failed
Former Oklahoma Gov. William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray once led an army of Oklahoma families into Bolivia in the Twenties in order to set up a series of colonies. In 1922, he obtained a land grant of 42,000 acres for $1,800 on condition he settle 25 families there by the end of 1925. The colonial […]
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Treasure of gold may be buried near Cherokee
Under the dam forming the Great Salt Plains Lake near Cherokee may be 1,400 pounds of gold bullion. In 1854, miners were returning from the California Gold Rush when they saw hostile American Indians riding up for an attack. Using the red bluffs near the river bank as a landmark, the miners took no chances, […]