Tag Archives: Tulsa

Turkey Mountain – Still Saying No to the Mall

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Since the controversy erupted about Simon Properties‘ plans to put an 800,000 square foot outlet mall on Turkey Mountain you would think that all there is on Turkey Mountain is trails. Goodness knows there are trails on Turkey Mountain.

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There are big wide trails and there are very faint, barely used, tracks through the grass and brush and everything in between.

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The trails are used by runners, walkers, hikers, bikers, and even a few unicyclers. There is a lot more than trails on Turkey Mountain. Yep.

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There are petroglyphs. I had heard about them and it took me a while to find but I finally found them.

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Some say they were made by the vikings way back when or the Celts. Who knows. I think such things are a lot more interesting than anything I have found in an outlet mall.

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What do you think?

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I’ll tell you something else that goes on up on the mountain. Logan and I went up there to check our geocache in an area called Rock City. We found a several guys up there with their radio controlled jeeps negotiating the rocks. It was pretty darned interesting watching them maneuver their cars around the various obstacles.

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Now that beats the pants off an outlet mall any day. Well guess what. I’m not really sure but if that mall goes in I am thinking that Rock City will be part of the mall. Yep, the best you can hope for is a Nike discount store. Buy two get a third half off is my motto.

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Do you know what else goes on up there. Geocaching and geocaching is all about families and being outside and adventure.  Kiss that goodbye also.

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And you know something else, geocaching is all about whimsy and serendipity. You won’t find any elves doors at the mall. Not one you could afford anyway. This one is free. It is on a pretty darn steep slope. Find the cache with one hand and hold for dear life with other is the method I recommend.

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Know what else? How about an Oklahoma Rock? It is probably safe from the bulldozers, for now at least. You know how it is, haters have to hate, and developers have to develop. It’s in the Bible somewhere. I think.

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The thing about Turkey Mountain is that is not a real wilderness. It has old abandoned farms, cisterns, fields, and lots of oilfield. I think it used to be kind of an outlaw kind of place that is slowly going back to nature. If only we would let it.

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There are lots of ghosts up on the mountain. You can almost see them at certain times late in the evening when almost everbody has gone home. There is an air of mystery about it.

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Anyway Turkey Mountain is unique. A wilderness within sight of downtown. It is important to keep it that way. An outlet mall can go anywhere. If you think we need one of course. We’ve been doing fine without is my opinion. Here is a little more information on the matter.

And here is a Online Petition opposing the location of the mall. Check it out.

And here is some information about the George Kaiser Family Foundation regarding their property on Turkey Mountain. They own 139 acres and pledge not to develop it. Lots of people thought that the acquisition happendd this week and that the mall is prevented. Actually, if I understand correctly, they have owned the property for some time. I guess that I have a little take on their announcement. I see it as a head nod to Simon to go ahead and send the bulldozers in, we won’t oppose you. I guess I’m a little cynical maybe. The Foundation has been really good to Tulsa They are a great supporter of the Turkey Mountain but I detect a note of surrender in their announcement.  The foundation is putting together a mammoth park project on the River Parks called A Gathering Place for Tulsa. It will cost over $300 million and will be wonderful. Check out the Link.

And here is the City Council and Tulsa Mayor web sites. Drop’em a line. Let them know how you feel.

Other Resources

Trail Zombie’s Post concerning the environmental impact.

The Tulsa Voice article referenced in Trail Zombie’s Post

New Facebook Page – Forgotten Malls of Tulsa reminding us that all malls have a lifecycle and it doesn’t last very long.

Blog Post by Bob Doucette on zoning and land use

Weekend Reflections – Rainy Days

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It has been raining here in Tulsa lately, a lot. It is the all day soft steady kind rather than the hard driving flood producing damaging kind of rain. We have been going through a drought so hopefully we are breaking it. Northeast Tulsa is called green country because of all the trees and general lushness. All that lushness requires a lot of water and Tulsa gets an average of 47 inches of rain a year and so far this year we are about 10 inches short of that so I hope we are making it up a little bit.

47 inches a year sounds like a lot to me. That is almost four feet of rain a year!  No wonder we spend so much money on drainage projects and dams around here!

So what about you? Are you getting enough rain where you live?

Weekend Reflections

 

“Hidden History of Tulsa” by Steve Gerkin

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I found “Hidden History of Tulsa” at our local Barnes and Noble. The author, Steve Gerkin, was having a book signing and I grabbed a copy and talked with him a little bit about the book. I mean I love hidden things, history, and Tulsa so it was like the holy trinity.

The book is a compilation of several articles that Mr. Gerkin wrote for “This Land” magazine. I thought I knew a lot about Tulsa history but the author brought a lot of new information to me. He writes a lot about Tulsa’s racial history, in particular the prominent role the Ku Klux Klan played in the early 20th century including the participation in the Klan by several of our prominent civic citizens at the time. He also provides new (to me) information about the Tulsa Race Riot. I found all that fascinating. Personally I think the scars from that era affect Tulsa today.

He covers a lot more including a 1929 dirigible flyover by the US Navy’s USS Los Angeles including pictures of downtown with office workers crowding the rooftops of the highrises downtown watching the spectacle. He also gets into some of Tulsa Oilman Harry Sinclair’s participation in the Teapot Dome Scandal.

Anyway, I loved this book and give it a five star rating.

Running a New Trail on Turkey Mountain

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It was Wednesday night and I took advantage of my weekly kitchen pass to go to Turkey Mountain to run a few miles. It has been a few weeks since I had been there and I was missing it. Check out this anchor, if you need tourism related information.

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I took off on the well known trails. There were less people than usual on the mountain even though the weather was very mild.

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Turkey Mountain has several marked trails, some with nice neat official looking markers. This marker is on the blue trail. People that go to Turkey Mountain a lot know that the official marked trails are just a framework. There are a multitude of unmarked trails. The unmarked trails are what makes the mountain fun. I think I have been on almost all of them. Or so I thought.

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The pink trail is a semiofficial trail on the west side of the mountain. It is probably the least traveled and known of the trails but also the longest and most complex.

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I like to go “off the reservation” to the seldom used trail on the other side of Elwood. I hardly ever see people there. I have seen a lot of deer there in the last year or so. I used to see lots of deer on main part of the mountain but as the park has gotten busier the deer have got scarcer.

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The trail is a single loop and it is very difficult to get lost.

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But on Wednesday night, I noticed a new trail with a new marker. Zoi? What is that. What does it mean. Anyway I took off down that trail. It was brand new. I had heard reference on facebook to somebody running several miles of brand new trail on Turkey Mountain and I wondered where it was. Well, I think I found it. The only thing was that it went on and on.

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And it was marked with pink ribbons. It was quite long and I got to wondering what the deal was. Does it loop back on itself or does it fizzle out or just what. I ran into some bikers that were dismounted and were clearing what they called a “cutoff” to bypass a real bad section just ahead. I bid them adieu and headed off to find the “bad section.” I kind of like bad sections.

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I got passed by a bunch of bikers going pretty fast.

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Later on I found the bad section and discovered that the fricking frackers had been there ahead of me. I’m actually a fan of fricking frackers, they put food on the table in my house. Seriously though this well looked like it still had tubing in it and a sucker rod string. What’s up with that? The tubing looks open to atmosphere and so there is probably no harm done, probably.

I finally found my way back to the connection to the existing trails. I was pretty happy. Not too many days when you can find new trails in an area where I thought I knew it all.

It is no fun being a know it all is what I say. What about you? What do you say