Brain Bites: Sojourn 2021 Prairie States: Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas (Part One: Dream Away Stays)

First of all, let me say this. In the modern world, when you don't know something, the new verb phrase is "just google it." But the hubby and I like to debate the minutiae of all things in life. So we haggalled about whether we were going to the Prairie or the Midwest.

I said both.

Yes we had anchor points for our tromp around this 4 state region of the midwest, and I begin with the places we stayed.

Usually we roll deep and strive to see and do as much as we can (practicing the "we may never pass this way again" motto), so where we lay our heads does not matter.

This time it was different. We had 2 specific sleeping places that required pre-registration and two stumble-upons of note.

Here we go:

There were a variety of reasons for exploring Oklahoma- mostly to look into the troubled past of the area and see how things are today.

The history is old. Older than my New England history books or mid-60's and 70's television shows' knowledge.

Land acknowledgements need to be here, for they explain some of the history.

Tulsa and all of Oklahoma, formerly known as "Indian Territory" became an area overrun with settler colonialism.

Today, 39 tribal nations dwell in the state of Oklahoma as a result of settler and colonial policies that were designed to assimilate Native people.

The city of Tulsa is within the tribal boundaries of three of these tribes: the Cherokee Nation, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and Osage Nation.

I acknowledge, honor and respect the diverse Indigenous peoples connected to this land.

Much work is being done to dismantle the egregious effects of the settler colonialism and its awful attempts at erasures and exclusions of Native folk. They are still here and I came to visit and bear witness to the trials and tribulations they faced. To try to see and understand what it is like on the Prairie in the 21st century.

In searching for a place to stay, this area B+B/Inn came up for its early history tied to Native People: STAY PLACE 1

Depending on where you get your information, there is either NOTHING or very little on the real history behind this place.

For instance, check out the website, "Only in Your State" for Oklahoma: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/oklahoma/cedar-rock-inn-ok/

This is what it says, "The historic home was built in 1890 by a prominent Native American family."

And that is it. No name, no history of the historic home. Nada. The Inn did not have any literature either. No books, pamphlets, wall hangings, etc. What little history came in the way of anecdotal oral history from the Innkeeper (who was a very sweet young lady).

Even knowing the family name did not produce reams of literature on this site or the family's accomplishments. I scrambled to find out if there was a book I could purchase to learn more. One museum either did not know and/or feigned ignorance when I called to inquire. The woman took my name and number, vowed to check their library and bookstore and call me back- she never did.

The family name was Perryman and their history is one of mixed heritage, a phenomena that has happened for many of us here in the melting pot USA. The Perrymans didn't start in Tulsa (as was the case for many tribes that were expelled from their tribal lands in that awful period of US history), but instead migrated from the Georgia area.

The family’s legacy began with Benjamin Perryman, the son of a Welsh trader and a Creek Indian woman. Tecumseh Perryman, a member of the Creek tribe/Perryman family, was the original owner of this property.

The Perryman family were some of the original founders of Tulsa, Oklahoma. There is a nice article about this family at: https://www.tulsapeople.com/family-ties/article_748f5e6d-ba26-5b49-95ad-9d22f1690d50.html

However, Tecumseh is not mentioned. Very hard to find out information about this Perryman descendant. What is known: the first floor of the dwelling – made from rocks – was originally a home built in 1890 and owned by Tecumseh Perryman. He was descended from Creek Nation Indians and an allotee of land from the Federal Government. Allegedly, Tecumseh was only 17 when he came to own this land.

The history of land stealing goes back as far as the first immigrant footsteps on North American soil. How and why this was done will be forever debated. The fact is that it was done. Here in the US we had our own particular way of "acquiring" Indigenous land.

The U.S. federal government began the policy of allotting Indian land as early as 1798. Several treaties with Indian tribes included provisions that stated land would be divided among their individual members. After 1871, however, Congress declared that no further treaties would be made and all future dealings with Indians would be conducted through legislation.

Yup, much like this area- known for its huge cattle ranches, cow towns, and long arduous cattle drives, the US government removed thousands of Eastern Indigenous folk to this new land in Oklahoma "Indian Territory," and began a series of head-scratching, convoluted laws on land allotments.

Tecumseh Perryman becomes lost in history accepting this exceptional preservation piece of land. We were awed and thankful to score this night's stay. Much ado has been made over the current owners 6 year renovation efforts. It really is a beautiful property. We had the additional great fortune to have the entire property to ourselves! We stayed in the Tecumseh section though, which was a bit dark and tiny bit scary.

Along with the requisite painting of the Inn on the rock walls.

Of course I had to take a picture in the mirror to see if any apparitions showed up with me. NONE. Nor any spooky knocks in the night (unless you count my husbands snores, which sometimes include knocking snorts).

A surprise treat was to find the new construction was done with labeled bricks thrown in. How'd they know I am a labeled brick enthusiast!?

Sure wish I had found that one (Pawhuska OK)! We went to this town later on our sojourn.

And we stayed in this BIG brick-making former cow town.

Hot damn if we didn't score one...

Or two!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Next up= a bucket list pick. While still in Oklahoma, up North heading to Kansas we scored a night in the ONLY Frank Lloyd Wright built SKYSCRAPER (and now hotel!!!) in Bartlesville, OK!

STAY PLACE 2

We could see the tower as we drove into town. The anticipatory thrill was an awesome feeling.

The gorgeous, signature green of FLW- what a sight!

Not originally built as a Hotel/Inn, it only became so in 2003. The Price Tower is a nineteen-story, 221-foot-high skyscraper built in 1956 to be an office building.

Checking in.

Check it out!

Hubby found the signature FLW tile!

While I found the National Register plaques.

Love the font!

The lobby was spot on FLW! Today, this is the building's main foyer, but when Price Tower opened, this ground-floor space was a dress shop, helping to meet Wright's requirement that the building be mixed-use. Those low couches were killer to sit and get up from though. Oh aging...

The female architect (yeah for woman!) chosen for the redesign, Wendy Evans Joseph, did a wonderful job at restoring this gorgeous place and turning 21 rooms into a boutique hotel.

For a nice article on Wendy + the award she got see here:

https://tulsaworld.com/archive/price-tower-renovation-architect-wins-award/article_e5c85154-dd01-5c28-aa17-b63739b8eb1b.html

We had a phenomenal time spending the night in this awesome place.

Hard to imagine that this once glorious place went for many years unused and declining. Also hard to judge is how much of a comeback it has had. Covid has certainly made for strange times. Even in post-Covid, we saw larger cities and smaller towns in our travels around Oklahoma that were little trafficked and some almost ghost town'ish.

The FLW details were everywhere. Wright designed a corporate logo for the Price Company, and every floor of the building has one embedded there. The building is oriented in the same direction as the logo. We learned about and begged our way into an interpretive tour that was Covid-limited. They squeezed us into the 4-person group. We were ecstatic!

The Cooper Restaurant wasn't open :( It also isn't original to the building, instead built as a part of the renovation).

Our tour guide, a wonderful gentlemen from Tulsa, filled us with anecdotal stories of the legendary FLW and his tyrannical ways when it came to building HIS buildings.

A nice video below on the Price family and their relationship to FLW and Bartlesville. The word "compromised" was used a lot on the tour. Above is one of the "compromises." The family wanted a mural, FLW wanted his favorite poet. Guess who "won"?

https://youtu.be/e5_ntfNxWv8

Conceptual drawing of the tower. In keeping with FLW's affinity to Nature, the tower is supposed to invoke the look and feel of a tree.

The Bartlesville landmark named Price Tower, commissioned from legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, served as offices for the H.C. Price International Pipeline Company for a quarter-century, from 1956 to 1981.

Initially, there were eight apartments in the building, with Bruce Goff (an architect of note who was mentored by FLW) living and working in the Price Tower for nearly nine years. The first and second floors of the Price Tower were designed for retail and housed a women’s dress shop, a beauty salon, and the offices of the Public Service Company of Oklahoma. On the floors above there were a variety of professional offices with the Price Company occupying the top seven floors of the tower including a sixteenth-floor commissary where free lunches were prepared and served to their employees. The seventeenth and eighteenth floors housed the Price Company corporate apartment and the company’s conference room. The nineteenth floor penthouse was the office suite for H.C. Price and his assistant.

When the Price businesses relocated to Dallas in 1981, Phillips Petroleum purchased the 19-story tower. After falling into disrepair, it was refurbished in 2000 and donated the following year to the nonprofit Price Tower Arts Center, formerly known as the Bartlesville Museum.

This bit of history is interesting especially as the tour guide told us about the competition with Philips for the tallest building in town. It seems the two men, Price and Philips were big names around town in mid-century Bartlesville, OK.

The museum had furniture from some of the offices. The tour took us into the executive office of Mr. Price as well as the corporate apartment (I wink, winked this one b/c we learned that his executive secretary- who shared a very tiny adjacent office to Mr. Price, was with him for some ridunkulous amount of time like 29 or 39 years), but we were unable to take pictures there.

Museum had a lot of FLW ugly + uncomfortable furniture.

Still standing and we drove by it later in the day. Not observable, but the signature FLW gate was there.

More of that really uncomfortable-looking furniture he insisted on designing himself.

The model of what our hotel room would/did look like.

Nice job Wendy!

History in the making!

The view from the top looking down to the train station and 2nd Street. Once the office building for Price when he started out in business (circa 1920). 2nd St. also has a sordid history from it's wilder days at the turn of the 20th century. The downtown is now a historic district, but it is now pretty empty.

The tour guide showed us this (must get) book of FLW sites that are open to visit. We had one more FLW site to see on our trip in Arkansas.

STAY PLACE 3

An additional anchor stay was at the World Famous Most Haunted Hotel in the USA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The drive into Eureka Springs is trippy. It was dusk and we had been on the road for a while. We still had an 8pm Ghost Tour to get to in town, and we had to go to the hotel first and check in. The Ozarks of Arkansas has many things, most of which we chose not to see (like areas in Northwest Arkansas that have histories of white supremacy, bigotry, sundown towns, etc.), but for years many folks have told us to head to the freaky, funky, ultra-liberal (aka hippy'ish) Eureka Springs. Cradled between 2 mountains, the roads wind and wend, down and up, into this valley of mostly Victorian homes (and over 200+ air b+b's). In one of the dips is the above sign, which hardly prepares you for the next up wend to the top of a hill and...

This! Even though this is a historical picture, the restored modern site is not that different.

It was a Monday night, but the parking lot was full and the place was hopping! Did I mention that Eureka Springs is a huge tourist place? It is.

Known as the Grand Old Lady of the Ozarks, the place has quite the history. First a grand hotel, empty by the depression, then a hospital with a quacky dr. (who ends up in jail), next a college and conservatory for young women, and now a tourist trap.

It was fun to tourist for a day or two on this vacation. We stayed at a similar place in Jerome, Az. a few years back and it was good to have a comparison.

It definitely felt old and lived in.

With some old style and elegance (even if we did get our pizza at 11p. from the bar on the 4th floor, lol).

The old style keys were a cool touch.

As was the cool door with nice old hardware knob in the middle of it.

The room looked and felt old and lived in. The requisite painting of the place was on the wall. Wonder how much it cost to have this semi-mass produced picture go up in all the rooms? Probably a pittance compared to the tourist dollars being pulled in.

The back of the house did seem to have brown-skinned folk (yes I found this throughout the trip, I am not going to lie).

But the tourists were a wonderful blend of colors and cultures (even if a woman with child pulled her child close and moved and clutched her bag as she walked past us- I am more convinced it wasn't the 'fro like hair on me but the combo of that plus the dude with a bejeweled and braided beard standing next to me, lol).

In all honesty, despite it being a lovely old hotel, nothing rattled or went bump in the night. The closest I came to getting spooked was finding this kitty that didn't seem to be moving at all. See video below.

Haunted hotel kitty

The most intriguing part about this place, was not the ghost tour (we didn't take), the hauntedness of the place (wasn't IMHO), but the unscrupulous and evil man who perpetrated fraud and trickery on vulnerable human beings who came here and died (and did not get cured as his false advertising promised). These dead spirits may linger about the place, sad and stuck in the ether, this is more believable to me. I did buy a book in town about the place. Here is a link to a good, short article the Smithsonian Magazine did on the place:

THE CHARLATAN OF THE OZARKS STILL LOOMS OVER THE HAUNTED CRESCENT HOTEL

STAY PLACE 4

The final place was a stumble-upon. We were scrambling for the last night stay- needing something relatively close to the airport. Here is what we found:

This is the Johnson Mill Building that was converted into a hotel. How cool is that? Now on my 3rd Mill Hotel stay (just sayin'). It has a couple of dates for construction (mid-1800's).

The mill ran well into the 20th century. It had a few name changes:

-1834 surveyor's field notes gave the name, Truesdale Mill to the location which in 1860 was known as Button's Mill.

-Button's Mill, which belonged to Seneca Button's widow, Isabella Button, was listed in the Arkansas Products of Industry Census for 1860 (I wonder if Seneca Button was an Indian???).

-And some more history: Isabella Button was the first appointed postmistress in the area of what is known today as the town of Johnson.

-In November, 1865, a deed was filed transferring the mill property to William, Samuel and Lucinda Mayes and Jacob Q. and Rhetta J. Johnson

-Two years later, 1867, J. Q. Johnson registered as the miller of 'Spring Mill.' It is believed reconstructing the present mill took about two years.

-In 1880, J. Q. and Rietta, bought the Mayes family's share in the mill and it became known as the 'Johnson Mill', a name it carried for the next 111 years.

Not only does the site have bad juju from the war destruction, but there is also bad blood in the Johnson family around this mill.

It seems there was a brotherly riff that came about at the death of the father of the family, James Johnson.

When James died, B. F. and J. Q. got into a heated argument blaming their father's death on each other. The rage and fury was so strong that at the first opportunity,B. F. repossessed the Mill and Johnson House from his brother and gave the entire property to his own son, B. B. Johnson.

There are some features that remain, like the exposed walnut beams inside the check-in/eating area, but for the most part the site is very modernized (and currently owned by an architect).