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you need a five five ninety Bible. That's eight five five nine zero Bible
eight five five ninety Bible. Good morning, good morning, good morning,
and welcome, welcome, welcome in this time now for our community connection right
here on kate one, the one you tryst. Now, these guys had
this two darn much fun last time they had come on back. How are
we doing here, guys, Well, it's great he be back, Susy.
Now, fellas we were talking about the Dewey Hotel, which is near
and near to your heart. We're gonna do something near and dear to maybe
your heart burned, but no, not really, just for your appetite.
We're gonna do something fun and raise some well needed funds. Yeah, tell
us about it. Well, this is our big benefit is coming up this
Saturday at the Masonic Lodge. You know, though that group does a lot
of good for this community. I think everybody gets a chance. But it's
our turn the Dewey Hotel and work. We got the best. We've got
price old fashioned meat market to be the caterers. They're one of the best
in town. Yeah, we're putting on We've got this big feed silent auction
riffles, but it's all designed to raise money for the Dewey Hotel. We
got to repaint the Old Girl oh yeah, and it's costing about fifty five
thousand dollars to a lot of people that are going all that's just ridiculous.
But we've got all these National Historic Places restrictions and you have to go by
you know, the restrictions of protected places. It has to be done a
certain way. That's why they last one hundred and twenty three area. But
it is an expensive endeavor and we have to raise the funds for it.
We've gotten I got grants as much as we can. But well, wrong,
you've been in on the beginning of it. You're a board member at
the Dewey Hotel. Yeah, well, how much have they raised something?
Well, they we've got right at about thirty nine thousand right now. That's
pretty darn good. Yeah, it's a good starting. Yeah, so we
did. We need a lot of appetites out there Saturday doing. Wow,
We've got some great prizes that, yeah, we really do. I mean,
We've we've got a handmade quilt that's just absolutely beautiful, and we got
gosh, we got a collection of knives that are commemorative knives for the guys
at like pocket knife Boy. There is some there's been a lot of interested
in the night. Yeah. And for the Masons out there, Yeah,
we've had a Masonic commemorative commemorative and knife donated. That's really really nice.
Yeah, and if you're amazing, you can't breed tomorrows there without that the
truth. Yeah. But we've also got we've also got some wonderful paintings.
There was a lady by the name of Cheryl O'Brien as a watercolor artist here
and she's a member of the Barville Art Center. Well, she has got
one watercolor that she's done for said has the Price Tower and the other one
has a bunch of old oil pumps and it's quite incredible. It is nice.
And then we've got Dad Ram Morgan, who who done Santa Claus pictures
of your truly of course it's great. Yeah, and I've even put my
own duties into it, you know. But we're Christmas Eve. I'm gonna
be this in somebody's house. You know. That's a great that's a that's
a great silent auction item. You've got lost one line. But you know,
for a certain amount of money, the highest bidder, Santa Claus will
arrive at your house on Christmas Eve and to say a visit. You know,
usually Santa doesn't hang around long. You know, you don't get kids
time to figure anything out. But he'll come to your house on Christmas Eve.
And how wonderful is that? And that's one of our auction items.
And you don't have to be there to win. We're going to deliver everything
to your house or you have to come by later and pick it up at
the hotel. But the Dewey Hotel is everybody know, it's the central icon
of history in our area, even Bartlesville. Jake Bartles built the hotel and
eighteen ninety eight, and you know, the Battle of Manila, the Spanish
American War was being fought during eighteen ninety eight and Admiral Dewey was the victor
of Manila. And Jake Bartles was a big patriot, a true patriot.
He was a union Man in the Civil War. And when that victory took
place, he was just he and Nanny Bartles were overcome with joy. So
he named his new town after Admiral Dewey. And you know, you just
don't name towns anymore after American heroes. We do even have new towns starting
well, you know, it was just amazing it might start a war.
Did Yeah, But I think that you build a three story story hotel that
was in the prairie, there was no other structures. It is amazing to
me to think that that's how that town started. It's the only Victorian structure
of its kind in Oklahoma. And they were going to tear it down in
the mid sixties, and the citizens of Dewey petitioned the Washington County Historical Society
to help save it, and they did so. About nineteen sixty six.
I was about to go off to college, and I remember when it became
a museum and Tommy's Museum it just opened right across the street, that's right,
And so suddenly Dewey had two of our best museums. Now we have
some world class museums here now, the Phillips even though it's closed, the
Phillips Museum, the Petroleum Museum. That's you know. We see a lot
of people who come through our hotel as tour guides and they're on their way
to Pahusca, you know, and and different places that are now nationally known,
and that they see that Dewey and Bartlesville have all these museums and including
our Local History Museum. Well, the other thing that we have there and
doing is Prairie Song isn't beautiful. We just lost its creators. We lost
right, And I just really hope that that someone in the family or maybe
some other organization takes it over and really MAXI shine, because that would be
a excellent tourism place if it just would open up and you know, more
public could go and see it. Lurish. Yeah, well, and it
was amazing. There A lot of movie companies have their eye on it.
I know a couple of do you know. I told a friend I lived
down in Austin, Texas when the big movie boom took off, and I
remember the headline was thirty three movies were made in Central Texas, and it's
like, you know, do you how that's nothing now for Texas. I
mean, there's hundreds of movies. And I always thought, well, Oklahoma
should be We have the same climate, the same people, the same towns,
the same everything, so why shouldn't we benefit. Well, it's finally
come to Oklahoma. You know. The Red River is no longer a boundary
for any of that. Our legist legislature a few years ago invited Hollywood to
come in and spend their money, and they they they've made major films there
as we all know, and there's more coming. Oh, we've got to
make one up at the hotel now. Now, well we've been growing up
there. What's the name of that ron It was Mike all the Dirty Jobs
Man. Yeah, well yeah, yeah, yeah, he's been. He
was really impressed. Yeah. Well, Killers of the Flower Moon wanted to
film at the hotel. I was gonna ask about that. Well they did,
and then COVID hit and then that the budget went down. I mean
they had to put it off for a year. But in the meantime,
the old Stage Nation said, but we told you all along, only would
that we want everything done where it happened. And they said, well,
and they said that includes Dewey Oklama. Oh. Well. The Sacy people
said, because we were waiting on them, they wanted to film there.
And they they explained to the old says, they said, you know,
we just don't have to build sets, that's all, We're just using the
interior that beautiful old hotel. And they said noo, noo, noop.
And so we didn't get to have any I didn't get to meet Robert de
narrow, but he's got good cigars. Well, it takes Leo Dicorpio.
Well, he hung out in Bartlesville. He did, he did. And
one of the things I want to remark about though, is I believe Ken
and Maryland tagged and came up with the name for the hotel, the Grand
Old Lady of the Prairie. That is so fit fitting when you think about
the background history of the hotel, and it is. Yeah. Well,
you know, mister bartles arranged for the local for the railroad to come through
here and the stage line. You could get on a train in Kansas City
and go to Lawrence, Kansas. From Lawrence to Coffeeville and a Coffeeville you
can catch a stage coach to Dewey and when you got off the stage coach
there's this new England Victorian hotel that's out in the middle of nowhere. And
he got the deals. And then later in nineteen twenty five, Phillips comes
along and he does the same thing. He takes people out to Wooller Rock
and woos them for the oil deals and he gets it. These were man
of vision and our community still is based on that vision. We're still visionary.
Look at running many towns like Bartles. Look at Runny. What Jag
and Nanny's son did. Joe, Yes, he created the duty around a
rodeo. Yeah, that was big for decades. It was big. They
started. It was nationally No. Eight. That was like the third largest
rodeo in the United States North America. Yeah. But man, there's pictures
up there that show the grounds of it. But they also have pictures of
the people that were there and the crowd. They say that they had had
a crowd of like three to forty thousand. And after seeing that photo,
it really does I mean, it tells you they and how those people got
around. I mean, you know, we think about it. I don't
walking here in the Yeah, yeah, here in the middle you know of
Oklahoma, and here they are coming from all over. Well, even back
in that stage they camped in. There were forty thousand people to see three
rodeos. Yeah, over a three day Fourth of July. It all out
ended tom In nineteen forty nine, they had a big stadium. It was
where the Dewey High School field is. It was where the rodeographies were.
But in nineteen forty nine, this biblical rain storm hit the area and it
loosened the pilings that hold up the stadium, and apparently someone a clown.
Rumor says a clown shot off a gun, and a comedy act and others
saved kids through the firecrackers. But they had these horses tied to those pilings,
and when they bolted, it started a shimmy and effect in that mud,
and the stadium collapsed on about fifteen thousand people. Oh and nobody died.
What a miracle. Yeah, sounds like the story of my grandpa and
his mercantile store. At the corner of the store was a post and it
had a sign that said, don't hitch hit your horse here. Well,
yeah, well, I was given a tour one day at the at the
hotel and an old man in his nineties. He says I was there that
day and that they collapsed, but he was I said, really, sir,
He goes yeah. He said he was under the stands picking up pop
bottles and he'd just come up and sit on the front row. When when
when that happened, he says, I just took off And I said,
well, you're sure, I said. The rumor is that it's firecrackers or
a clown act that started back, and I said, which was it?
You were there? He goes, I don't know, Hell, I took
off. You just had the bottles and try to get some lunch with him
made. But historically, historically that was a lot going on for the new
area and all of that. We celebrate those times now with the heritage days.
We're just coming up. Yeah. October the fourteen, they had those
law horns that come up. Man, that's one that's gonna be so cool.
It was right in front of the hotel and then the hotel. They
also have that guy that's on horse on top of a trailer that they're pulling.
Johnny's one armed bed. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna haveredible How he's
able to get that horse to turn around? Is that amazing? Yeah?
I said, John, Now, how do you get that horse up on
the trailer? He goes, Oh, that's nothing, he said, getting
them to stay on the different story, well, even all of that,
Stico's still associated with the original. The original rodeo started as a Wild West
show. Mister Bardell's was dying of a disease and he wanted to see his
old buddies from the Union in Civil War, and they brought all those old
kinds as buddies down and put him in the hotel and the local cowboys and
ranchers put on a wild West show, and it was so much fun.
They did it again the next year and the next year, and they said,
well, heck, let's just name it the Dewey Round Up Rodeo.
And it lasted until nineteen forty nine, and after it collapsed, nobody died.
They never rebuilt. And but Dewey has other history. They had an
airplane factory there back in World War One that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to tell
the right brothers, will you stop at, you know, hassling these these
factories. They said they wanted money. It was they had invented the airplane,
and they said, you'd invented it, they're not using your design.
We need these planes for the war. And so little Dewey was a part
of that history. That's all there. It's a wonderful little town. Well
then then old Don Tyler comes into the picture and build the seamen's lane.
Yeah yeah, and my lands, I mean they they had a whole lot
very Portland and uh men. But there again at the hotel, what it
is so neat had no idea that they used to pack cement in cloth bags.
Yeah, and they didn't have the paper ones until a lot later.
But it was incredible because we have a suit that somebody had made for him
out of those sacks. That's on exhibit up there. Oh yeah, in
all the donations speaking of exhibits, a hotel and Dewey. When it closed,
it didn't have any of the original things, not a whole lot.
All the donations now come from. It has to be pre Indian I mean
pre statehood Indian Territory, and we've gotten Victorian furniture. And it was the
first structure in Indian Territory to receive electricity of it and mister Bardell's didn't totally
trust it, so he kept gas in half of it. Yeah, them
water waterline where they had had the kitchen, had water in in the saint
you know where they could do it. Yes, everything, and he just
it represents such a modern time for Indian Territory. Now, this was all
white encroachment country around here. You had to marry into the Indian Nations if
you wanted if you were a white person, you wanted land. And mister
Barteles did that his wife was Nanny Bartle's and she was the daughter of a
chief journey cake of the Delaware Nation. And he was a preacher, and
she became a big follower. She built the first Baptist church and do it's
still there. Yeah. Anyway, this educated wealthy lady. This was her
land, her land alotment that the hotel was built on. And women were
not allowed to own a business until the eighteen seventies h And when they got
married the Bartle she was ready to be an entrepreneur. And when statehood arrived
from being Indian territory, the Bartles were some of the richest families of the
new state. Home. You know what's amazing about that church is it has
a stained glass window of her Nanny. Yes, it does on display right
now, and apparently it's supposed to be donated back to the hotel. We
have the perfect location for it. Oh boy, we ever and a lot
of people Nanny's spirit is still around, That's what I hear it is.
Now, we've got the big event coming up Saturday. This could everybody Friday.
It's gonna be between five and eight pm. We thought it would be
an excellent time for everybody because they're going to dinner. So we're gonna have
some good country cooking. Now tell them what they mean. Yeah, it's
gonna be Hammond beans and corn bread, baghetable beef stew with crackers and corn
bell Frito pies, chili. Yeah. Yeah, we got donating cobblers.
Yeah, Culinary art department. Yeah, BlackBerry and cherry has responded, well,
Tom, Yeah, it's it's it's our opportunity to come and eat with
us and help restore the old grand old lady of the prayer. Hey,
we gotta we gotta remind now one more thing about damn pies and that and
that prime red bill that yeah, oh col yeah, oh man, the
coconut and the cherry. It's what they got. Well that prime rid oh
man, that steak is as big as the platter. It goes over the
planter, right right. Yeah. And then of course it's going to be
at the Masonic lotch nice location. Nice. I'll tell you what tell me.
It's always the pleasure. I learned so much. It's best history lesson
I ever get. Thanks for having it.