Turner Falls Park

Honey Creek comes out of springs in the Arbuckle Mountains and falls seventy-seven feet at Turner Falls into a natural pool. The park and the Oklahoma Historical Society call it the state's largest waterfall, though Natural Falls State Park has one of about the same height. The rock here is very old: the western Arbuckles have a core of granite and gneiss 1.3 billion years old under rhyolite and the limestone, dolomite, sandstone and shale left by seas between 515 and 290 million years ago. The park takes in three caves.

The falls carry the name of Mazeppa Thomas Turner, born in Virginia to Scottish parents, who married Laura J. Johnson, a Chickasaw, and in 1878 settled with her in a cabin on Honey Creek, then in Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation. The City of Davis has owned the park since 1919 and bought 370 acres from the Turner family in 1925 for a reported $17,000. It leased it out from 1950 to 1978. The rock castle above the falls was built in 1930 as a summer home for Dr. Ellsworth Collings of the University of Oklahoma.

Admission is charged per person and rises in summer and on weekends. Swimming closes for the season on October 1, and from late November the creek is stocked with trout for winter fishing by permit. Children 12 and under must wear a Coast Guard approved life jacket in the water, the park strongly recommends one for anyone who is not a strong swimmer, and pets are not allowed.