Trip Report

[BarryBobPosthole]

On Saturday, I took my daughter and niece and sister (yeah I was badly outnumbered) to a museum up at a place called Woolaroc, in northern Oklahoma in the Osage Hills. The museum is in a park that was built and is maintained by the Frank Phillips family, he of Phillips Petroleum fame. But he did a lot more than just drill for oil. He was an amateur archaeologist and started life as a successful barber. He also commissioned and built the first airplane to make a non-stop flight to Hawaii. There are a ton of indian artifacts and stuff in the museum, but I have always loved it for the art. Good collection of Remington, Russell, and one of my favorites a guy named William R Leigh. I also noticed this time a bunch of excellent stuff by someone named J. Beele, but I haven't been able to dind anything about him. He did a bust of Geronimo that almost talks to you. Any way, it was a cool way to spend a Saturday. The museum also has two really awesome collections of Colt guns of all types. there were some plain old weird experimental pistols there too that were colt prototypes, like one revolver that you loaded from the front of the cylinder instead of the back. and the buntline Colt pistols were pretty strange too, with barrels about two feet long.

I go up to Woolaroc about every other year or so and I learn new stuff every time I go. By the way, Woolaroc stands for 'Woods, Lands, Rock'. Its really a pretty place. If you're ever in that part of the country, and I can't imagine why you would be, you should drop in there. The Spiro Mounds exhibits are worth the trip alone and kind of puts things in a different perspective when you realize there was a pretty sophisticated civilization in the middle of America around the time Charlemagne was doing his thing in Europe. the thing that I hadn't thought of before was how many of their artifacts are made from things that had to come from hundreds, and in some case thousands of miles away from where they were. Really interesting stuff.

Plus it was nice traipsing around with some youngsters for a whole day.

BKB

[LW]

It is a nice place. I have helped chaperone school field trips there more than once. I am always glad to do it.