The 'olden days' Belle Isle?

[OKCisOK4me]

hahaha...I was SMH'ing due to my own thoughts. It's all good ;-)

[Boomer3791]

My grandparents lived in the Belle Isle neighborhood off of Penn, just north of Penn Square Mall. Their house was on the far eastern end of the housing addition, and backed up to the Belle Isle Power Plant. In the 80's, me and my brother and some of our more adventurous friends snuck into the power plant several times. At that point all of the 1st and 2nd floor windows had been sealed shut and covered with steel plates. To get in, you had to scale down a former water intake on the south side of the building at a point that would have been underwater when the original lake there was full. The grate over the intake was bent back from the top and you could lower yourself down to ground level. From there you could walk into the plant from below and up a flight of stairs. All the original machinery inside had long since been stripped out by that point, and many of the upper "floors" were just steel grating, so the whole place felt like a huge industrial cathederal. I remember climbing up flights of very rickety steel staircases and avoiding spots where the grating had fallen away, up to the roof and that great, green smokestack. There was grafitti everywhere and one hack of a view of the surrounding area. It was quite an adventure for a 13 year old kid at the time!

[OKCisOK4me]

At least you weren't one of the teens that died.

[PennyQuilts]

I lived out by NE 63rd and Coltrane and the Deep Fork crossed NE 63rd right by the little airport that was just east of I35. I once saw a big bobcat race across the road coming up out of the creek at dawn one morning - still get a thrill at the memory. When I moved out there it had been there forever and that was more than forty years ago.

Did anyone else watch them blow up the belle Isle building? That was one dang cold day.

[OKCisOK4me]

I saw it on TV and of course I remember the picture of it tumbling over on the Daily Oklahoman the next day.