Dying Breed Field Trip: Woolaroc Museum and Wildlife Preserve
Wherein I visit an oil tycoon's eclectic monument to a vanishing West — and make contact with the ghosts of the past
It’s been a while since my last Dying Breed Field Trip. Figured it was time for another one.
Today we’re leaving T-Town and heading north on State Highway 11, up into the Osage Hills of northeastern Oklahoma, to visit one of my favorite places in the whole state: the Woolaroc Museum and Wildlife Preserve.
Got your permission slip signed? Then hop on the bus and let’s go.
If you asked me to pick the most quintessentially Oklahoma place in Oklahoma, I’d pick Woolaroc. It’s an amalgamation of oil money and Old West culture sitting on 3,700 acres of beautiful, rolling hills in the Osage Nation.
Not only is it home to one of the best collections of Western art and American Indian artifacts in the world, but it’s also a wildlife preserve and a shrine to one of the great oil tycoons of the early 20th century: Frank Phillips of Phillips 66 fame.
I’m a big fan of staying in touch with the past, and have always enjoyed visiting historical museums to facilitate that kind of contact. For some reason, Woolaroc helps you viscerally feel the presence of the ghosts of the past more than any other museum I’ve been to. Maybe it’s because the place wasn’t only a museum but was visited by real-life historical figures (and is also an actual graveyard; Frank Phillips is entombed in a mausoleum on the property). Maybe it’s because it’s so eclectic and non-stuffy; it doesn’t have the more formal, antiseptic, super scholarly feel of some museums; rather than trying to lay out strict history, Woolaroc preserves the narrative of the Old West. There’s plenty of factual stuff, but it also captures the myth of the period. The feel is refreshing, imagination-spurring. And there are lots of photographs that you find yourself staring at, as you think about how all the people in them are dead and have a Dead Poets Society, carpe diem moment.
Whatever it is, Woolaroc does what contact with the past does best: it reminds you of your own mortality and the fact that the present moment, while it feels like the apotheosis of history and culture, will, just like every era, one day pass away.
The McKays recently made the trip up to Woolaroc, which is about an hour’s drive from Tulsa. I took some pictures so I could try to capture some of its coolness and share it here with the folks on Dying Breed. Those who have been reading Lonesome Dove with me this summer will likely find this field trip relevant. Maybe it will inspire you to make the trip to visit. Or to seek out some weird historic spot in your neck of the woods.
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