The Cherokee Outlet & the Osage Hills
The 1893 Outlet run at Enid, Ponca City's oil mansion, the Kaw and Ponca nations' own places, Osage Pawhuska, and bison on the tallgrass.
This region splits along the Arkansas River. West of it lies the Cherokee Outlet, land the Cherokee Nation was made to sell, where some 100,000 people raced for claims at noon on September 16, 1893. Enid, Ponca City and Perry were founded that afternoon, and towns rose on the prairie by nightfall. East of the river the land rises into the blackjack hills and tallgrass of Osage County, which is the Osage Nation Reservation, about 1,470,000 acres the Osage bought with the money from their Kansas lands in 1872.
After 1866 the government began moving smaller nations onto the Outlet's eastern third and the lands beside it. The Ponca, Kaw, Otoe-Missouria, Pawnee and Tonkawa all have their seats here, and the Kaw Nation's museum at Kaw City and Standing Bear Park in Ponca City are the places to begin. In Pawhuska the Osage Nation Museum has kept the Nation's own collection since 1938.
Oil made Ponca City, where E. W. Marland's mansion stands. North of Pawhuska, the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has a free-roaming herd of about 2,500 bison on almost 40,000 acres of unplowed prairie. Pawnee Bill's ranch is closed for restoration and the White Hair Memorial is closed, so check both before going.
What to See in The Cherokee Outlet & the Osage Hills
8 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Natural Areas
Historic Sites
Towns & Gateways
Architecture
Scenic Drives through The Cherokee Outlet & the Osage Hills
Stories from The Cherokee Outlet & the Osage Hills
Proof of Competency
In the Osage oil boom, county courts handed the money of Osage citizens to white guardians, and the system turned the deaths of the 1920s into estates.
The Fault Under Prague
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake in Lincoln County in 2011 told Oklahomans that salt water from the oil fields was waking faults in one of the quietest parts of the continent.
The Cherokee Outlet & the Osage Hills rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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