Good morning, good morning, morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's
time now for a community connection and doesn't get much more community than this.
I always like having Ron and Joe in here because we talked to the Dewey
Hotel. We talk all kinds of things. Yeah, but this is this
is a big thing, you fella, this guy going on at the hotel.
You got a tour going on the next couple of days, right,
we do. The holidays are upon the hotel and the Dewey Hotel Museum.
Well, it's undergone a lot of hardship over the years, and like anything,
it pops back from time to time. But the COVID really got us.
Yeah, but we stayed open and we came up with new ways to
have to fundraise and have fun to put the focus back on the big icon.
Yeah. That all the history in this area hard hard to imagine.
You know that that Jake and Nanny decided to be that hotel out in the
middle of the prairie with no with no homes, nothing nothing around her.
It was just truly amazing. Well, it helps to have the Delaware Tribe
of Indians land allotment. I tell people that Delaware money helped build that hotel
and the land and her money and Jake Bartlew's money. And Jake bartles came
here in eighteen seventy three, and he would have been a Civil War a
Union man. He was a New Jersey guy and family big in agriculture,
and someone said the prairie was very fertile. So he comes down to Kansas
and tries it out, and the Civil War starts, and he joined the
Union. And he came down into this country for the first time because this
was Confederate hell Lands, and the first time he'd seen this area, and
he said, you know, this is really nice, rich river bottom country.
But we went back to Kansas. He met his wife, Nanny,
who was the Delaware and she was the daughter of the Delaware chief, journey
Cake. And he was also a preacher, you know, and she started
the first Baptist church there in Dewey. I tell people she was a member
of the BBB, and the guests will say, well, what's that.
I'll say, that's the better Baptist Bureau. And I tell you, can
you imagine what kind of stories between the ladies happened in Nanny's parlor? Oh
yeah, Nanny held it all in the party there until the church was built.
Ye. Well, she loved to play music, you know, I
had had a beautiful shine back then, Yeah, she did. And then
she had a pie organ, yep. And it was just unbelievable. I
meant, you know how she had brought people in and carried on, you
know, their little church ladies. You know, well they said the parlor
at the Dewey Hotel was one of the most popular places in the area to
meet anything socially happening took play. Well, she was a refined lady to
begin with. She was well educated and had gone to a college finishing school
and she and you know, back in the eighteen hundreds, women were not
allowed to own a business or property, and that's something but the Cherokee Nation,
you know, this was all Cherokee Country, and the Delaware were a
part of that area. But the Cherokees changed all that. They said,
our women are going to have the same rights as the states around us.
And so when they in the eighteen seventies, somewhere they rescinded that in Indian
Territory, and she and Jake Bartles got married, came down here and built
that hotel to accommodate a week business. Yea, and boy they did well.
They get free seed to the area farmers and then they would bring him
business in the spring. He practiced the old barter system. He was a
smart man. Yeah. The thing that really amazed me though, on the
top of everything else, he had a business sense to bring his mercantile store.
I'm talking about a two story building from the Canty River down in Barsville
and drug it all the way up to Dewey on logs and oxen. Oh
that's and put it right there where now, well the Toomics Museum is.
But it was just amazing one structure. They didn't take it apart or anything.
Oh, they just run together. Ye put it on a track.
Yeah. Now we think of these days, that's pretty quick drive up to
Dewey up on one twenty three. Yeah, that's that. And then you
you take away the car, you got the oxen and logs and roll in
the house. Man that they had to take about the better part of a
week, if not a mo took him eighty eight days to mediate open.
The store stayed open as it moved, you know. And I what really
surprised me was when when we found out uh was that Bill Johnstone and Keeler
actually worked for Jake and the Mercantile store. Oh, and asked what prompted
them to come to Barsville to build the Johnstone Keeler store, And that's partially
what made him mad. He said, you know, I'll just take my
store to Dewey, and he did with him, but you know, very
popular. He had eight three eight hour shifts of breadmaking at that store around
the clock. And I guess if you if you want to bread, you
bought it from the Pioneer General and as fresh as fresh could be. Oh
yeah, and butter that the fairly lived upstairs of the store. And when
they got to Dewey, the hotel had just been completed, and they lived
at the Dewey Hotel on the second floor. But that store was opened until
the nineteen fifties. And all of those railroad piles that he had helped build
the track on to get the store up there, he put them down behind
the new store where the Tom Mixed Museum is, and a lightning struck it
in nineteen fifty set those railroad tiles on fire with all that oil in it,
and it burned the store down. Nineteen fifty oh. But when it
was opened it was a reasers of its day for Indian It had everything if
you wanted to shop in the area, the women found you. What was
really funny too, was up in a hotel there. Actually you think it's
a toy, but they got a little who's your cabinet that's not but maybe
eighteen inches tall, and then they've got a cast ironed little bit of cast
iron stove. And I always thought they were toys, but then I later
had an elderly person come in and said, no, those were display models
for the traveling salesman, and that they would go around to the merchants,
you know that had these mercantiles and would show them what they're what they looked
like, and then they had a catalog that they could order anything you wanted,
you know, and then ship it a railroad down to the store.
That was pretty amazing. I mean, I think that they had that kind
of enterprise, you know, going you know, to bring in. The
hotel was the place to eat on Sunday afternoons that everybody went to the Dewey
Hotel to eat. It was like the del Monicos of Dodge City. And
you know, we discovered that there were three hundred in the records. That
shows three hundred people on holidays would eat there on a Sunday afternoon, and
that meant there was a line outside, a lot of tobacco chewing and wait
your turn for the turkey. Yeah. Story talent, Yeah, storyteller.
Before we came up with the porchstalkers. Well, you guys been going strong
for a while. Well we in bellish here and there, but you know,
but we have a big activity coming up we wanted to talk about.
It's we're getting ready to have the Dewey Christmas Tree Lighting sixth annual. Well,
it's we're celebrating the small town Christmas. Dewey is just you know,
I was reading the other day where Dewey was. I saw the headline that
said Dewey voted the third safest city in Oklahoma, and I guess it's back
in the nineteen twenties, and what made it safe was the very fact that
it was so isolated and friendly. It's what gave way to the cement factory
coming there. They had an airplane factory that lasted well, it was in
nineteen fifteen, going strong all through World War One and an FDR was Secretary
of the Navy, and he's the one that finally told the right brother the
one that was left. The right brothers kept suing anyone who made an aeroplane
until they pay royalties. An FDR said, they're making them in Europe.
You're holding backgress progress. We need this for the war effort. And Dewey
was right in the middle of that, and so it lasted up until the
early twenties and airplane factory in Dewey. So it's always been a little prosperous
little town centered around that beautiful Victorian hotel. Well you know what another thing
made it he was that you had Tom Mixes your night watchman there. Yeah,
yeah, I wonder he. Uh. Hollywood decided that he would make
a good actor, you know, Western actor. Uh. And just it
seems so funny though to look back at at all they talked not I mean,
it wasn't talking, but it was a silent movie. Well, his
first film was made outside of Dewey at Blue Mountain. That was film.
Yeah there. Yeah, see we've been making movies for a long time around
here. Yeah. Yeah, if we have now it's we need the money
more than ever now. Yeah, well, we had a few. We
had a few outlaws too. Oh yeah. Bonnie and Clyde often wondered if
they ever stayed there. Well, you know, let me know, Jake
probably told him. They said, now you better not rob my bank.
Well, we know outlaws played poker there on the third floor of the hotel.
EMMITTT. Dalton, Uh, he from the Dame the Dalton. He's
the only survivor of the Dalton game. When he got out of prison,
he married a Martlesville woman, I think her name was Johnson, and she
was totally fascinated with outlaws and and Emmett just fell head over heels for her.
And Emmett has played poker up there. She's buried in Dewey. But
you know interesting the outlaws, this was outlaw country. Henry Wells the outlaw
that was hired by Frank Phillips to kind of keep outlaws happy around his rim.
Oh yeah, well, I was just waiting recently where Wells uh filed
the plan that pretty boy Floyd was planning to kidnap Frank Phillips did that wild
eye. It's it's documented. And Wells, whether he made it up or
not, he alerted the Wooler rock Rach hands that this is being planned.
And of course I think he helped instigate the Outlaws and Kaltheave's reunion, which
is still going on. But you know, it must have been awfully hard
on the ridge back in the twenties to be living out there in the old
sage of that beautiful wretch wide open. But yeah, well served his purpose
very well. But I had never heard that about pretty boy Floyd before.
We just recently had a big breakfast to help out with the pain job on
the Dewey Hotel. How did that go? Well, we made a little
that's good, real good. Well, I'll tell you that price catering now,
oh man, they're good. I mean he has got it down.
It pattented well. And his fundraisers. He understands the community effort and what
a fundraiser is all about. Yeah, it's not always making money as being
a good community person. That's right. The money we made on that fundraiser,
the important thing is it raised awareness of the hotel, our need to
keep that old building painting. There's so many restrictions. It's a historic National
Historic Register. You got to fit to a narrow set of guidelines. You
do and with the idea that it saves the taxpayers money down the line by
keeping it in good shape, you don't have to do it as often.
It all makes sense, but it's still fifty five thousand dollars to pay the
building. Yea, an old one hundred and twenty three year old building.
Yeah, but you know it'll be around for another one hundred and twenty three
years in on Conger Wood. Well, you know it was fascinating to me
is that I had learned that originally the foundation on that hotel was sandstone blocks,
and they some years ago, it's not been all that long, they
did a whole complete new concrete stemwall around the whole dog on perimeter of the
hotel, and a lot of those stones they used and put out near where
this poor slab are. Yeah. Yeah, and we made it. We
come up with the idea that we wanted to put in some new flag poles,
so we used the stones to make its outer yeah. Yeah, and
it looks good too. Yeah. It really turned out to be a nice
project. And you know, an outfront in that flag where those flags are,
we have a red Oklahoma state flag. A lot of people don't realize
Oklahoma's first flag was a beautiful red with a white star in the number forty
six in the middle for the forty six state. Well, one of the
board members of Dewey, Virginia Chew. Well, she's an old timer up
there and she knows so much history. She says. Yes, Joe,
she says, And they finally changed it because they thought it was just a
little too cog so they turns out good. Yeah, we got about a
minute left here, guys that said, we're gonna do something this summer with
some picking and grinning and having some fun. We're planning a guitar pick this
summer featuring musicians from the area. And that's where everybody sings, sings a
song, about eight musicians. They sing a couple of songs each and they
has a moderator and it's just a big event in Nashville, and there's so
many musicians around here. We're planning one and we're planning to ask you to
be a part of it. Tom, I'm in yeah. But before we
go, Tom, we need to say Next Thursday, November the thirtieth,
from six to eight is the Dewey Christmas Lighting and Santa Claus starring rod Anams.
Santa Claus is going to be featured. This is the Santa's inside.
Families start lining up at six o'clock. Santa's only there from six to eight,
but it's a beautiful place to come and see Santa in the Old Hotel
and we've got it all organized the family, nice decorated, nicely decorated Victorian
and it don't miss out on your if you've got the little ones, come
to Dewey and visit Santa in the Old Hotel from six to eight November the
thirtieth, next Thursday. Alrighty, that sounds great. And gentlemen, good
luck this weekend here because you guys are on you guys are on stage or
on the porch, you should say, don't you talking on all day to
day? All right, take care of ladies and gentlemen. We got news
coming up in just a few