Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

The Wichitas are old mountains worn low. The granite, rhyolite and gabbro that make them were solidifying underground about 525 million years ago, were pushed up between 330 and 290 million years ago, and have since weathered to hills 400 to 1,000 feet above the plain. The rock defeated the plow, which is why a block of mixed-grass prairie survived here. In 1901, just before the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation around it was opened to settlers, President William McKinley made part of the range a forest reserve.

Theodore Roosevelt turned it into the Wichita Forest and Game Preserve on June 2, 1905. That year the New York Zoological Park, later the Bronx Zoo, offered fifteen bison if the government would fence a range, and in October 1907 the animals arrived by train. Quanah Parker led a Comanche party to meet them, and older Comanche told of the herds they had known before the slaughter. Elk followed in 1908 and longhorn cattle in 1927. The preserve became a wildlife refuge after its 1936 transfer from the Forest Service, and the Charons Garden and North Mountain units were made wilderness in 1970.

Captain Randolph Marcy named Mount Scott in 1851 for General Winfield Scott, and the road to its 2,464-foot top opened in 1938. The refuge covers 59,020 acres, 22,400 of them open to the public. There is no drinking water anywhere on it, cell coverage is patchy, and bison and longhorn wander the roads and trails freely.