Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge

When the Corps of Engineers built Denison Dam in 1939, Lake Texoma backed up the Washita River below Tishomingo and formed the Cumberland Pool. On January 24, 1946, President Harry Truman established a national wildlife refuge there, an overlay on the Corps project, as a refuge and wintering ground for migratory birds of the Central Flyway. It now protects 16,464 acres and takes its name, like the town, from the Chickasaw leader Tishomingo.

Staff and volunteers plant winter wheat in the fields along Wildlife Drive, and in fall snow geese and white-fronted geese arrive by the thousands to feed on it. By March the fields turn to grasses and wildflowers for butterflies and nesting birds. What is left of the Blackland Prairie, with little and big bluestem, Indiangrass, paintbrush and bluebonnet, is kept open with mowers and prescribed fire. A flood in 2015 put about 80 percent of it under water, some ground for three months.

Start at the visitor center on Refuge Road, two miles south of town, calling ahead because its weekday hours vary. The Craven Nature Trail, named for the first manager, Earl Craven, is a half-mile loop to a deck on Dick's Pond. Exhibits recall the Washita Farm of 1920 and the Chickasaw Manual Labor Academy, which opened on refuge land in 1851. The 2.4-mile si' Aapisa' Hin-oshi', Eagle Lookout Trail in Chickasaw, runs from Murray 23 to the observation tower past Sandy Creek. The lands are open sunrise to sunset, with no charge.