Claremore, OK

Will Rogers, Still Fueling Claremore

Claremore, Okla., long ago adopted America’s most famous cowboy humorist and philosopher as its native son. And Will Rogers still fuels the town’s economy.

The part-Cherokee author and actor was born in 1879 in Indian Territory near Claremore (pop. 17,982). A museum, former library, hotel, statues, and a street in the town all honor Rogers.

“That (Will Rogers Memorial) is what people come to Claremore for,” says Susan Haynes Thompson, office manager for the chamber of commerce. “I’m amazed at how many people come through here to visit the memorial.”

It’s a town where history mingles with progress. Along spacious Will Rogers Boulevard are mom-and-pop shops, fast-food restaurants and turn-of-the-century buildings. Farther along the street are antique shops with tin ceilings, clothing stores, and a modern newspaper office. Down narrower side streets are historic churches and restored Victorian buildings, while the nearby Expo Center, built in 1999, includes an arena and recreation facility.

But the Will Rogers Memorial Museum, showcasing Rogers’ life through vast collections of art and artifacts, is the big draw.

“Everything in the museum is from Will Rogers or is Will Rogers-related,” says curator Greg Malak. “I’d say 90 percent actually belonged to him.”

Rogers, killed in a plane crash in 1935, crammed a lot of living into 55 years. He developed trick roping skills on the family’s Dog Iron Ranch, then landed jobs in Wild West shows and vaudeville, later starring in the Ziegfield Follies in New York before heading to California, where he made 71 movies. Rogers stepped up to a radio microphone in 1922 and won immediate fans with his “Aw Shucks” style, humor, and common sense. He penned more than 4,000 syndicated newspaper columns and six books.

“What keeps him alive is what he stood for and what he said,” Malak says. “The Will Rogers spirit—it’s not that different from what many Oklahomans possess: common sense, hard work, honesty. He never lost his roots.”

Although Rogers died 66 years ago, his image lingers around town: A statue depicts him reading the paper on a bench outside the newspaper office, a sketch of his smiling face in the newspaper’s banner, and a statue at a microphone in the Hotel Will Rogers.

“He’s everywhere,” says Pat Reeder, Daily Progress executive editor. “Whenever someone asks about Claremore, I say, ‘The home of Will Rogers.’ He is Claremore’s claim to fame.”

Rogers isn’t Claremore’s only famous native. The town is also the home of Lynn Riggs, author of Green Grow the Lilacs, a play set in 1900s Claremore. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein based their 1943 Pulitzer Prize winning musical Oklahoma! on the play. The play and a movie made later are still seen so often that most anyone can belt out the first line to the musical’s title number, “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!”

Will Rogers Boulevard intersects Lynn Riggs Boulevard, which also intersects Patti Page Boulevard, named for the singer also born here.

Claremore is also home to the J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum, housing a collection of 20,000 guns, Indian artifacts, and other memorabilia collected by Davis, says Shirley Johnson, museum director. The Smithsonian Institution offered Davis $7 million for his collection, but he leased it instead to Oklahoma for $1 for 99 years, with an option to renew.

While about 60 percent of the town’s workers commute to nearby Tulsa for jobs, Thompson suspects they live in Claremore for the same reasons her family moved here from California: that “small community” quality of life, good schools, and property values that don’t drop.

The folks who call Claremore home are the kind of people Will Rogers probably had in mind when he said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”

Jan Nierling is a freelance writer and editor living in Bixby, Okla.

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