SAND SPRINGS

    þ   Turn right/west on Edison from Gilcrease Drive and travel for 2.6 miles.
    þ   Pass Central High School, Chouteau Elementary School, and two creeks.
    þ   At 2.6 miles Edison angles to the left/south and becomes 65th West Avenue.
    þ   Travel .4 miles to OK 64. Turn right/west on Highway 64, traveling parallel to the Arkansas River.
    þ   When you reach Adams Road, turn left/south and travel under the highway.
    þ   Just after you emerge, turn left/east into the Drug Warehouse.
    þ   Park in its east parking lot. Go to the back of the parking lot toward the highway. There you will see a bike and hiking trail which goes all the way to Tulsa. Here you will find one of the original sand springs that gave the city its name.
    þ   Leave Sand Springs and continue west on OK 64.

Retrace your route from Bald Hill to Edison Avenue. Turn out on Edison the right/west. If you were to continue south, you would soon meet the Arkansas River. Continue on Edison for 2.6 miles. Look to the left just beyond Gilcrease Drive and and you will see Central High School. Central’s football team is called the Central Braves and a beautiful bronze called The Great Spirit watches over the students. Look to your left on 39th and you will see Chouteau School, named for the family that built the trading post where our travelers met after leaving Fort Gibson. The school was actually named for Jean Pierre Chouteau, Auguste’s father. An Oklahoma ballerina, Yvonne Chouteau, was the youngest American ever to be a member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

Continue on Edison. Go around a hill and down toward a small park in the center of the road. At 2.6 miles Edison angles to the left and becomes 65th West Avenue. Turn down along the east side of the park on 65th toward Highway 64. Travel .4 miles to the highway and turn right/west. When you enter Highway 64, you are parallel to the Arkansas River. You have yet to cross over the Arkansas, because in 1832, Irving would not yet have done so. As you near Sand Springs, you can look to the left/south and see the hills across the river, beautiful champaign country.

You might want to read about an extraordinary man named Charles Page, the founder of Sand Springs. Notice that Sand Springs is situated on a series of highlands. The land continues this way with rolling hills and valleys. Sand Springs is named for the sand springs that were so useful to early settlers. They may also have been useful for the Tourists. Stop at a remaining spring just behind the Drug Warehouse on Adams Road and Highway 64. It was perhaps this sandy spring and this stream that welcomed Irving at 8:00 in the evening after an eventful day. Irving camped at or near the sand springs in Sand Springs on the night of October 14.

. . . we struck the Arkansas . . . . still below the Red Fork, and as the river made deep bends, we again left its banks we encamped in a beautiful basin bordered by a fine stream, and shaded by clumps of lofty oaks. WI 65

This was the night described when you viewed the massive bronze elk on Riverside Drive in Tulsa. The young ranger McLellan was the hero of October 14 when he brought in his first elk and fed the camp.

The young huntsman . . . was the “father of the feast” . . . portions of his elk were seen roasting at every fire. WI 66

Early the next morning a phenomenon occurred that would occur many mornings until the flour and the energy of the young rangers just plain wore out.

. . . a youngster . . . shaking off his sleep, crowed in imitation of a cock, with a loud, clear note and prolonged cadence, that would have done credit to the most veteran chanticleer. He was immediately answered . . . as if from a rival rooster. The chant was echoed from lodge to lodge, and followed by the cackling of hens, quacking of ducks, gabbling of turkeys, and grunting of swine, until we seemed to have been transported into the midst of a farmyard . . . WI 67

Irving would soon reach the Cimarron and cross the Arkansas River. A buffalo hunt back and forth across today’s Interstate 35 between Oklahoma City and Norman was ahead. They hungered and thirsted. They suffered through the iron hard wood and razor sharp briars of the Cross-Timbers. But as of October 15, 1832, Washington Irving left Bixby, Tulsa, and Sand Springs behind forever.

[My Story]  [A Tour on the Praries] [A Tour through Tulsa] [A Tour through OK City] [Links] [Order the Book]