1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (79 page)

Stay in one of the town’s many B&Bs, including the Pollard Inn, a converted bank next to the Pollard Theatre. This year-round professional theater is most famous for
A Territorial Christmas Carol,
a frontier version of the Dickens classic, a longtime, much-loved tradition in these parts.

Guthrie’s annual 89er Celebration parade commemorates Oklahoma’s Land Run of 1889.

W
HERE
: 25 miles north of Oklahoma City.
Visitor info:
Tel 800–299-1889 or 405–282-1947;
www.guthrieok.com
.
B
LUE
B
ELLE
S
ALOON
: Tel 405–282-8111.
When:
closed Sun.
M
ISS
L
IZZIE’S
B
ORDELLO
: Tel 405–282-6477.
B
ANJO
H
ALL OF
F
AME
: Tel 405–260-1323;
www.banjomuseum.org
.
D
OUBLE
-S
TOP
F
IDDLE
S
HOP
: Tel 405–282-6646;
www.doublestop.com
.
R
ITE
M
ASONIC
T
EMPLE
: Tel 405–282-1281;
www.guthriescottishrite.org
.
When:
tours Mon–Fri.
P
OLLARD
I
NN
: Tel 800–375-1001 or 405–282-1000;
www.thepollardinn.com
.
Cost:
from $80.
P
OLLARD
T
HEATRE
: Tel 405–282-2800;
www.thepollard.org
.
Cost:
$22 for
A Territorial Christmas Carol.
B
EST TIMES
: mid-Apr for 89er Celebration; late May for the Guthrie Jazz Banjo Festival (
www.banjofestival.com
); 1st weekend of Oct for the Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival (
www.oibf.com
); Dec for Guthrie Territorial Christmas Celebration.

Where Cowboy Culture Lives On

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

When cattlemen and cowboys come into town they head straight for Stockyards City Main Street, a retail district smack in the center of the city, chock-full of saddleries and Western-wear clothing stores. It’s right
next to the Oklahoma National Stockyards, the world’s largest stocker/feeder market, where every Monday and Tuesday you can watch live cattle being auctioned, a spectacle where millions of dollars change hands with the nod of a head.

For the uninitiated, cattlemen are the men who own the livestock (cowboys are the hired hands) and, their business dealings done, they stop at Cattlemen’s Restaurant, the consummate Western steakhouse and the state’s busiest restaurant. The most popular cut is rib-eye quickly broiled over hot charcoals and served in a salty jus with homemade Parker House rolls. Adventurous palates can start with a plate of lamb fries—the deep-fried testicles of lambs. Delicately flavored and melting tender, they can taste pretty good if you don’t know what you’re eating.

The original 1910 café is popular for breakfast, but the dinner crowd likes the 1960s-era South Dining Room. Settle into a red vinyl booth, riding a little low from the bulk of the generations of beef-lovers before you, and enjoy the backlit wall-size panorama, a garishly tinted photograph of two gentlemen ranchers herding Black Angus beneath a radiant blue sky. One of them is Gene Wade, who won the place in a craps game in 1945 and ran it until 1990.

Directly across the street is Langston’s Western Wear, Oklahoma’s oldest Western-wear store and the very first stop on any cowboy’s shopping spree. Oklahoma has more horses per capita than any other state, and Langston’s is piled high with Wrangler jeans as well as a dizzying selection of boots and oversize belt buckles.

At Stemwinder Custom Hats, the first step toward buying one of their hand-blocked beauties is trying on “The Conformer,” a torturesome-looking device patented in 1872 that draws a map of your head (not the oval you might expect, but an odd peanut shape), to ensure the perfect fit.

Oklahoma City also has more horse shows than any other city in America, and Stockyards City Main Street is at its best and busiest during competitions like the American Quarter Horse Association World Championship Show. Drawing competitors from around the world, the show features real-life cowboy skills like cutting, a two-and-a-half-minute battle of wills where horses (and their riders) have to keep a single cow away from the herd.

W
HERE
: Stockyards City Main Street, 1305 S. Agnew Ave. Tel 405–235-7267;
www.stockyardscity.org
.
O
KLAHOMA
N
ATIONAL
S
TOCKYARDS
: Tel 405–235-8675;
www.onsy.com
.
C
ATTLEMEN’S
R
ESTAURANT
: Tel 405–236-0416;
www.cattlemensrestaurant.com
.
Cost:
dinner $25.
L
ANGSTON’S
: Tel 405–235-9536;
www.langstons.com
.
S
TEMWINDER
C
USTOM
H
ATS
: Tel 405–231-4287.
Cost:
hats from $350.
B
EST TIME
: 1st 2 weeks of Nov for American Quarter Horse Association World Championship Show (
www.aqha.com
).

How the Wild West Was Tamed

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

The Old West comes to life down to the last vivid detail at this salute to cowboy culture. A distant train whistle punctuates the tinny melody of a saloon’s player piano in Prosperity Junction, the moody re-creation of an
early 1900s cattle town just after dusk. Kerosene lanterns light the livery stable, illuminating a plaque’s good advice for stagecoach passengers: Don’t pomade your hair before the journey, it will collect dust.

The museum’s American Cowboy Gallery follows the evolution of the ranching industry in the West, starting with the nattily dressed Spanish vaqueros of colonial times who taught cowboys the skills, if not the sartorial flair, they began honing in Europe in the late 1500s, and it ends in the 20th century. A large collection of clothing, boots, bridles, saddles, and ropes will expand your knowledge about cowboy fashion and how it varied from region to region.

The End of the Trail
(1915) by James Earle Fraser is a highlight of the museum.

In the Western Performers Gallery, a 1950s matinee theater plays grainy movie clips that demonstrate the sway the West has always exerted on Hollywood’s—and the world’s—imagination. Within a replica 1950s rodeo arena, the American Rodeo Gallery tells the story of the gritty, dangerous lives of bronc busters and bull riders and the history behind the West’s truly indigenous sport. There’s a good permanent collection of Western artists, particularly a significant group of paintings and sculpture by Charlie Russell and Frederic Remington. A focal figure is the highly recognizable piece
The End of the Trail,
an 18-foot plaster sculpture of a lone, defeated Indian on his weary horse.

If you’ve got a hankering for some real cowboy grub, you’ll have to wait for the museum’s annual Memorial Day event, the Chuck Wagon Gathering & Children’s Cowboy Festival, when crews of ranch hands rustle up cowboy food—brisket, beans, and sourdough biscuits baked in Dutch ovens buried in coals in the ground—and serve it off ten chuck wagons in a shaded, grassy field at the bottom of Persimmon Hill.

W
HERE
: 1700 NE 63rd St. Tel 405–478-2250;
www.nationalcowboymuseum.org
.
B
EST TIME
: late May for Chuck Wagon Gathering & Children’s Cowboy Festival.

On the Powwow Trail

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Oklahoma is home to 39 tribes, more than any other state. It’s an unmatched cultural wealth that manifests itself every summer, when you can find a powwow—and its attendant colorfully costumed dancers in
full regalia—almost every weekend. You’ll be spoiled for life if your first introduction to a powwow is at the Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival. It includes a large juried fine arts and crafts show where you can buy paintings, pottery, and jewelry—reason enough for many to go. But there’s no doubt most of the 250,000 visitors come to see the performers, who travel from as far away as Hawaii and Alberta, Canada, to compete.

Visitors get easily swept up in the drumming, singing, and dancing. There are countless styles of dance, each mesmerizing in its own way. Men’s Northern Traditional, the original dance of the Northern Plains, depicts a warrior challenging an enemy and uses buckskin and natural colors in the costuming. The fast-paced, neon-colored Men’s Fancy Dance is the showiest and most athletically demanding, usually performed by boys and young men. And there’s no mistaking the popularity of the Tiny Tots division, children age five and under who learn to dance as soon as they walk—it’s not just proud parents beaming in the audience.

Bring a lawn chair to smaller powwows that are held on the open plains or in wooded groves, often on tribal lands. You may not see the polished level of showmanship of the Red Earth Festival at these local powwows, but they have a more traditional, authentic community feel, and can be often more interesting for that very reason. And you are always welcome.

Other places to explore Indian culture include the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, which has a living history village and a museum. During the summer, the center performs the Trail of Tears Drama, reenacting the forced relocation of the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast to Oklahoma in the mid-1800s. Anadarko’s annual American Indian Exposition in August is where tribes show off their cultural traditions and the princesses who will represent them for the year, proving that, for all the hardships they suffered, it was never really the end of the trail. Indian traditions live on vibrantly.

W
HERE
: Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City. Tel 405–427-5228;
www.redearth.org
.
When:
1st weekend in June.
Powwows info:
www.powwows.com
.
C
HEROKEE
H
ERITAGE
C
ENTER
: Tahlequah. Tel 888–999-6007 or 918–456-6007;
www.cherokeeheritage.org
.
When:
closed Jan. Trail of Tears Drama Thurs–Sat, late-June–early-Sept.
A
MERICAN
I
NDIAN
E
XPOSITION
: Anadarko. Tel 580–247-6651;
www.anadarko.org
.
When:
1st week in Aug.

An Oil Baron’s Prairie Palace

Ponca City, Oklahoma

Averitable Hearst Castle of the Plains, the Marland Estate Mansion is a lavish 55-room villa built from 1925–28 for an astounding $5.5 million. That was just a sliver of the massive fortune of E. W. Marland, a
Pittsburgh native who came to Ponca City in 1908 in search of oil and was rewarded with stupendous finds on the vast prairies leased from the Ponca tribe southeast of the city. It was the start of an era when Oklahoma was at the epicenter of the world’s biggest oil discoveries; at one point in the 1920s Marland personally controlled 10 percent of the world’s oil. Awash in money and inspired by the Renaissance Davanzati Palace in Florence, the oil baron gathered artisans from all over the world, including a master Italian muralist responsible for all the ornately painted ceilings throughout the mansion.