Oklahoma City: Water, Rail, Road

[Praedura]

I just came across a great link from a very interesting site. It covers so many topics that I didn't know how to best catagorize it, so I just started a new thread for it.

The Great Mirror - Great Mirror Photos, Captioned Pictures, Travel Gallery Images - is (according to the site) "a collection of over 10,000 photographs of cultural or humanized landscapes. Arranged geographically and captioned, all the photos and captions are by Bret Wallach, a geography professor at the University of Oklahoma."

Of particular interest is a page dedicated to the downtown section of OKC which focuses on the history and development of the Oklahoma River, the railway system and depots, and the I-40 re-alignment.

U.S.: Oklahoma: Oklahoma City: Water, Rail, Road

Tons and tons of great pics there, along with a good helping of history and historical context. Some of the pics are clearly pre-Devon, but as you go along, especially near the end, you hit some more recent pics including the Skydance Bridge, etc.

Really neat site.

[Praedura]

Some interesting quotes about historical railway service:

"In 1925, a few years before the construction of this terminal, Oklahoma City had 20 passenger trains arriving and another 20 passenger trains departing daily. They included eight Santa Fe trains running north to Chicago and south to Houston, as well as eight Rock Island trains. Both the Frisco and MKT ran two trains daily to Kansas City."

"From 1927 to 1959, the Rock Island's Texas Rocket ran from Kansas City to Houston. Rock Island trains also crossed Oklahoma City en route from Memphis west to Tucumcari, New Mexico, where they joined the Southern Pacific's line to California."

[Jim Kyle]

I wish he had taken more pains to get his history correct. For instance, he says that the interurban station was in the same block as the Union bus depot. Not so. It was a block to the east, between Hudson and Harvey on the north side of Grand. After the electric trolleys quit running, in 1947, the terminal was eventually replaced by a multi-story parking garage. And parts of the old "car barn" at SW 3 and Exchange, diagonally across from Farmers' Market, were still evident the last time I was down that way (which was, however, pre-I40-relocation).

His views of Oklahoma small towns reveal major bias. While it's true that many of the smaller towns have become almost deserted, he carefully omits those which have not. For instance, in Beckham county he only features Erick -- although both Sayre and Elk City are far more representative of the region. And there's no mention at all of Cordell or Duncan, both of which have successfully countered the tendency toward decline.

It's definitely an interesting site, but be warned that it doesn't present a balanced view of our city or state!

[Praedura]

An awesome photo of the Frisco passenger depot in front of the Skirvin:



(on display at Union Station)

[Praedura]

Dismantling I-40:



and the forest of pylons left over:

[OKCisOK4me]

That forest of pylons has been gone for weeks.

[Praedura]

That forest of pylons has been gone for weeks.

Yes, of course. I just thought those were some interesting shots.

Perhaps this thread is is the wrong place, but it was very hard to catagorize. Put it under 'transportation', and all the river stuff (and downtown building info) is out of place. Same for putting under 'river development'.

Putting it under 'history' probably would have been the most logical. Except the history threads tend to mostly be about "see how it used to be". There's an element of that in the article, but it's more about the state of OKC's railways, highways, waterways (and the resulting downtown development) that uses historical context to explain what exists (and going on) now. So it's really about the current situation, using the past as a guide.