The Trip Through
No Man's Land

The land in here turns to flat with little bitty hills punched up out of the ground.  In the winter it is all emerald green with wheat.   Approaching Watonga the land raises a thick crop of grazing grass.  How easy it is to see the buffalo of yesterday moving through here.

In 1976 the Watonga Chamber of Commerce president was advised by a community development team to start a festival promoting some local food product as a way of bringing recognition to the community.  Since Watonga has the only cheese factory in Oklahoma, that easily made them the LARGEST cheese producer in the state.  

Consequently, the first cheese festival consisted of a food contest, poster contest for grade school children, and art show.  This was the beginning of one of the premiere festivals in Oklahoma.  The festival is now a huge two-day event that attracts approximately 15,000 people and continues to grow each year.  

A large group of loyal, hard-working people make up the Cheese Festival committee which operates under the umbrella of the Watonga Chamber of Commerce.

 The Festival hours are 9 am to 6 pm on the second Friday and Saturday in October.  There is an admission charge of $2 for adults. Children twelve and under are free.  The proceeds help fund the operating budget of the Watonga Chamber.

Any time you get near Watonga, you should plan a visit to the Roman Nose State Park area. You'll see why after looking at the best photos of the area.  Check out http://www.shopoklahoma.com/romannos.htm for a full load.  The writing on this site is excellent and highly informative.

In leaving Watonga we turned left with US Highways 270 and 281 to go off annie goggling to the west and north.  The clouds on the horizon were dragging the ground.  Cedar trees are plentiful and beautiful.  Dotted willow spots indicate water close to the surface in this area where the Comanche used to stop.  The pheasants here look larger and fuller than those I'm more familiar with.  The wind blows mostly towards the north, through scrub oak, pecan, elm, locust and the cedar.  There's a lot of hay raised in here, but I didn't see what kind of balers are being used.

We spent the night at Woodward. History says the little town sprang to life between noon and sunset on the day of September 16, 1893 with a new population of 5000. That night, a voluntary committee on law and order came around to spoil the fun, "If you must shoot, shoot straight up!"

Today the town is very clean and the people we met were shooting straight from the hip with exceptionally friendly conversations.  The town seems to have recovered well from the oil bust of '84 too.  There are lots of places to stay and places to eat, with price ranges to fit every budget except homeless.  Fifteen city parks with fishing and canoeing, etc. makes the town of Woodward a very nice stay indeed. Each park has it's own theme.  For example, one park is the center for tournaments in the game of horse shoes.  They must take the game as seriously here as I did in my youth.   

For good measure, throw in the nearby Alabaster Caverns State Park, the largest gypsum cave in the world open to the public.  The cavern is 3/4 of a mile long. Inside you will find rock and mineral formations that can be seen in few other places. Here you will discover huge carved boulders of alabaster.  Most intriguing of all is a fine-grained mass of gypsum in pink, white and even a rare black.

Then too, the 820-acre Boiling Springs State Park is not more than 8 miles away from Woodward.  Thirty miles southwest on Highway 15 is the town of Shattuck.  In this little certified city is the Windmill Museum and Park with more than 40 vintage windmills.  If you have ever been dying of thirst and found a stock tank with a working windmill (as I have countless times) your little heart will do flip flops at the opportunity to drive 30 miles and see 42 of them turning in the wind at one time.  

Back to Woodward, we leave town on Highway 3 the land is very sparsely treed, with hardly enough cover on the land to keep a duck warm.  Chamisa, tumbleweeds, sage and a scattering of cedar provide what little protection there is.  Elm and cottonwood are found along the gullies and washes.  The land here is rolling hills and the road is continuously rising in front of us. 

Fort Supply is north west of Woodward.  This small community used to be an Army fort and held supplies for everyone from General Miles to Colonel Custer.  These days it is home to a state prison and state hospital for the criminally insane.  The land around here is well cared for and is mostly cultivated in winter wheat.  There are working windmills and stock tanks every few hundred acres.  One thing about Red Country, the wind ALWAYS blows up here.

Now, to tell this story in proper sequence I have to jump ahead about a hundred miles and then come back.  In Guymon Oklahoma lives a Charlaine Kneeland.  Two or three days each week she works at the little welcome station on the edge of town.

Charlaine has sparkling eyes and wonderful tales to tell of this whole region.  Everything written here from Ft. Supply to Guymon comes from her.  

The famous 101 Ranch was bought by people from Great Britain.  It included most of the land south of Guymon and dropped down into part of the Texas Panhandle.  It had more land than all of England, Scotland and Ireland put together.  The ranch was totally self sufficient. It had its own blacksmith shop, its own bakery, its own butcher shop, and made its own boots.  The towns of Wellington and Shamrock were started by these owners.

The town of Optima got its name in response to a little boy's question.  "Daddy, we've gone so far, can't we stop here and build a home?" And the father looked around briefly and nodded.  "It's up to ma."

The great dam of Optima is famous for being built in the wrong place.  It was built in the wrong place in spite of the protests of numerous people that it was being built in the wrong place.  The dam was completed in 1978 but to this very day the lake has never risen enough to flood any of the refuge lands it was designed to create wetlands out of.

The refuge does make a home for both white-tailed deer and mule deer, coyotes, Rio Grande turkeys,  ring-necked pheasant, bobwhite quail, and scaled quail -- and then there are the bobcat, coyote, beaver, porcupine, black-tailed jackrabbit, badger, raccoon, and skunk.. Common raptors are common all year-round.  The air currents are known to carry both bald and golden eagles, turkey vulture, the Mississippi kite, American kestrel, red-tailed hawk, marsh hawk, Swainson's hawk, and the ferruginous hawk. A keen eye can also see prairie falcon, rough-legged hawk, and Cooper's hawk. Resident game birds include the Rio Grande turkey,.

The little town of Slapout got its name from an expression made by an under-financed store owner.  When people came in asking if different things were in stock he would shake his head and say, "No, slap out."  After awhile it became obvious that what he had most of in the store was slap out.

The town of Letty got its name from the mother of the man who started the first store.  When she was yet a little girl Letty was trying to hold the front door shut with her hands.  Outside was a gang of outlaws determined to break in and take the family hostage.  They shot through the door and drilled splinters clean through both her hands.  

When you come to Guymon, schedule in a few hours of talking to Charlaine.  She has hundreds more stories to tell.  

Guymon is the largest, and the most centrally located town in the panhandle.  The elevation here is 3126 feet.  The Chamber of Commerce at Guymon has 36 shining shovels on the wall, one for each new business started since 1990 -- all as a direct result of bringing in the Seaboard Hog Operation.  1300 hogs a day can be processed here regularly.  I can remember one dark, cold night that it took six of us four hours to process one hog, but that included boiling our own water over an open fire too.

Boise City, Oklahoma, the county seat of Cimarron County, is the next large town on our tour.  It has an elevation of 4,165 feet at the court house. It is sixteen miles north of the Texas state line, eighteen miles south of the Colorado line, and twenty-seven miles east of the New Mexico state line. It has a population of approximately 1,786 people.  The school system here covers 887 square miles.  Truant officers are at a premium.

Boise City is part of Cimarron County.  Of the 3,070 counties in the USA, Cimarron is the only one that touches five states.  Also good to know, there is not one stop light in the entire county.  That just about tells you how crowded this area is.  It wasn't always that way though because there have been more Indian artifacts found in Cimarron County than any other county in the United States.

On July 5, 1943, Boise City was the only U.S. city  bombed during World War II.  This dastardly deed of derring-do sandbagging was done by an Air Force B-17 crew who claim they "mistook the lights around the courthouse square for the bombing range thirty miles to the southeast. Six 100 pound practice bombs (four pounds of powder and ninety-six pounds of sand) were dropped. There were no casualties, but some near misses and many irate but slightly amused citizens."

That there courthouse square requires a backseat driver with years of experience to get where you're heading the first time.  Having a camera in one hand and a cell phone in the other did not make it any easier!  

If I ever get my youth back I am returning to compete in the "World Championship Posthole Digging Contest", if they let professionals in.

A series of dinosaur tracks in a strata of solid rock may be seen in the bed of a creek near the Black Mesa. The area where the tracks are found was at one time a swamp and forest area.  Tons of dinosaur fossils have been taken from this area.

     There are three sets of tracks in the creek bed - the main set, a shallower but similar set about 50 yards upstream, and a smaller and much more eroded set downstream. These tracks are in Jurassic formation - sandstone - 150 millions years old. These tracks were probably made by plant-eaters, as determined by the large size of the tracks and the webbed toes. 

This concludes our tour through No Man's Land.  Next stop, Taos New Mexico.