Oklahoma Trivia & Tidbits - Page 9

Looking for Oklahoma trivia? Try our list Oklahoma little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Established as a Forest Reserve in 1901 and a Game Preserve in 1905, the 59,020-acre Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Indiahoma (pop. 374) is the nation’s oldest managed wildlife preserve. The refuge is home to the state’s largest breeding population of black-capped vireos, numbering almost 1,300 birds.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge also features four major grazing herds. While white-tailed deer have always been present, American bison, Texas longhorn cattle and Rocky Mountain elk had to be reintroduced into the area. The bison arrived in 1907 from the New York Zoological Society; the elk were transferred from Wyoming in 1911; and the cattle came from the lower Rio Grande region in 1927.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

Known for her Emmy-winning role as Karen in the TV show Will & Grace, Megan Mullally was born in Los Angeles in 1958 and raised in Oklahoma City, where she performed as a solo dancer with Ballet Oklahoma. She also has appeared on Broadway in Grease and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

The last raid of the Bill Doolin’s outlaw gang, the Wild Bunch, was the robbery of the Rock Island train at Dover (pop. 367) in the Oklahoma Territory on April 3, 1895. Famed lawman Deputy U.S. Marshal William Matthew Tilghman Jr. captured Doolin, the "King of the Oklahoma Bandits," in 1896. He escaped and was shot to death by Deputy Heck Thomas in Lawson in Payne County.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

The state motto, Labor Omnia Vincit, is a Latin phrase that means "Labor Conquers All Things." It appeared in 1893 on the Grand Seal of the Territory of Oklahoma and later was included on the Great Seal of the State of Oklahoma with the adoption of the 1907 state constitution.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

The Washita Battlefield National Historic Site near Cheyenne (pop. 778) protects the site of a Southern Cheyenne Indian village attacked by the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Lt. Col. George A. Custer just before dawn on Nov. 27, 1868. At the time, the attack was hailed by some as a significant step forward in the military’s attempts to curtail Indian raids on frontier settlements. Others viewed it as a massacre. Among those killed was Chief Black Kettle, who had long been an active proponent of peaceful relations with the United States.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

Opened in the 1930s, the Afton (pop. 1,118) Service Station served motorists on Route 66 for almost 60 years. Today’s travelers can tour the station to view the restoration efforts underway—new tin ceiling panels, wainscoting, painting and lighting.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

When you sit down to eat Oklahoma’s official state meal, adopted by the Legislature in 1988, you’ll be served fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecued pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken-fried steak, pecan pie and black-eyed peas.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

With more than 10,000 pieces of art dating from Colonial times to the present, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa has one of the world’s largest collections of art from the American West.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

Thomas Gilcrease (1890-1962) founded the Gilcrease Oil Co. in 1922, after oil was discovered on his land south of Tulsa, and began collecting art. Pride in his Creek Indian ancestry and an interest in the history of the American West provided a focus for his collection, which he deeded to the city of Tulsa in 1955, thus forming the Gilcrease Museum.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

International opera star Leona Mitchell was raised in Enid (pop. 47,045). She received early vocal training with the choir of the Antioch Baptist Church, where her father was the minister. A lyric soprano, Mitchell has performed for 18 consecutive seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and has sung nearly 200 performances of the opera Aida in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

At the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s National Finals in Oklahoma City in December 1967, rodeo star and Oklahoma rancher Freckles Brown (1921-1987) rode a bull named Tornado, which had thrown 220 previous riders, for eight seconds. Born in Wheatland, Wyo., Brown was the World Champion Bull Rider in 1962 and is buried in Hugo (pop. 5,536) in the Showman’s Rest section of Mount Olivet Cemetery.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

Curtis Hart has created a 70-acre open-air museum for motorcycles, Mack trucks and muscle cars at his Muscle Car Ranch, originally an early 1900s dairy farm, near Chickasha (pop. 15,850). The ranch includes a restored 1940s diner, thousands of antique automotive signs and cars such as Hart’s 1969 Camaro.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

Born in Texas in 1936, singer/songwriter Roger Dean Miller was raised in Erick (pop. 1,023), where the Roger Miller Museum opened in 2004 as a tribute to his career. Miller reportedly wrote one of his first hits, 1964’s Dang Me, in four minutes in a Phoenix hotel. His career-maker took longer: The 1965 song King of the Road, which Miller said was inspired by road signs outside Chicago that read "Trailers for Sale or Rent," took about six weeks. Miller died in 1992 from cancer.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

Actor and singer Shelby "Sheb" Wooley (1921-2003) also hailed from Erick. He scored a 1958 hit with the song Purple People Eater, became a cast member of the TV Western Rawhide, which aired from 1959 to 1966, wrote the theme song for the country music TV show Hee Haw, and appeared on the show as the drunken songwriter Ben Colder.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

More than 11,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, the Cimarron River’s flow left behind terrace deposits and quartz that became very fine quartz sand. Today, the sand creates more than 1,400 acres of sand dunes that soar from 25 to 75 feet high in Little Sahara State Park near Waynoka (pop. 993), attracting nearly 100,000 off-road vehicle users each year.

first appeared: 3/13/2005

Known as an "Angel of Bataan," Col. Rosemary Hogan (1912-1964) was one of the first Army nurses to receive a Purple Heart after she was wounded in April 1942 while serving on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. Hogan, a native of Walters (pop. 2,657) and Chattanooga (pop. 432), was held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war in Manila from 1942 to 1945.

first appeared: 2/27/2005

At The Inn at Price Tower in Bartlesville (pop. 34,748), guests stay in a building designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The 21-room hotel occupies several floors of the 19-story skyscraper. Wright called the 1956 structure on the prairie "the tree that escaped the crowded forest."

first appeared: 2/13/2005

Lake Eufaula, on the Canadian River, is the largest lake located entirely within Oklahoma. It covers 102,400 acres and has more than 600 miles of shoreline.

first appeared: 2/13/2005

The state doesn’t have a seacoast, but that hasn’t stopped the Oklahoma Aquarium along the Arkansas River in Jenks (pop. 9,557) from showcasing the ocean. The facility, which opened in 2003, boasts more than a million gallons of water filled with fresh- and salt-water creatures, including sharks, piranhas, seahorses and coral reefs. Aquarium exhibits trace the journey of a drop of water from the mountains to the sea.

first appeared: 1/30/2005

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