Port of Catoosa

A port?  In Tulsa?  When we read about this museum we had to check it out.  The museum is small--essentially one room--but we learned a lot.

This life ring hangs at the museum, giving the name of the tug boat on display on the grounds. 

But how do the boats or barges needing a tug boat get to Tulsa, Oklahoma?  That is sort of a long story.  In 1943 an Arkansas River flood covered a 15-mile stretch  in Oklahoma from Muskogee to Fort Gibson.  By 1946 the Arkansas Basin Development Association had been created and the US Rivers and Harbors Act had passed by he US Congress.  Construction of the controlled waterway began in 1950 and was completed in 1970. 

The project includes 18 locks and dams and 3 reservoirs along 455 miles of the Arkansas river from Catoosa, Oklahoma, to the Mississippi River in Arkansas.  Barges, which are much more energy efficient than either trains or trucks, carry freight to ports on the Arkansas River.  Today more than 100 industries are located along the Oklahoma section of this waterway, employing more than 4,000 people with a total payroll of  more than $1.4 million.  Catoosa is the largest and most inland port in the entire 25,000 mile inland waterway system.

As a side note, in 2014 we stayed in the Toad Suck Ferry COE campground along the waterway in Conway, Arkansas.  If you click on the photo below you can see that ferry location.

The rug on the floor of the museum shows the navigable rivers in the inland waterways of our country.

Here is the Charley Border tug boat.

This is a picture of the propeller end of the Charley Border tug.

Late April is obviously field trip time in the local schools.  We have encountered groups of young people at the Oxley Nature Center, the Woody Guthrie Center and here at the Port of Catoosa.

These young people really enjoyed being in the wheel house of the Charley Border.

Woody Guthrie

We learned a lot about the Dust Bowl and the Depression during our visit to the Woody Guthrie Center in downtown Tulsa.  Many of his early songs concerned the problems faced by everyday folks during those difficult times.  Here are two well-dressed men seeing jobs.

Woody had been caught in the severe dust storm that moved across Oklahoma on April 14, 1935--Black Sunday--and one of his songs talks about that experience.  The storm was so massive it has even been included in a documentary on the Dust Bowl by Ken Burns.

I was dwarfed by this mural in the center's lobby.

This is one of the photos of that dust storm that is included in the Burns film.

In addition to writing music, Woody was quite an artist.  This is just a small section of one wall in the museum showing some of his drawings.  You can click on the photo to enlarge it and get a better view.

Guthrie wrote protest songs and supported working people against the establishment.  This is one of his banjos.

During World War II, Guthrie served in the Merchant Marine.  Twice his ships were torpedoed.  The words on the top right side of the strings of this guitar say  "Once Drowned, Twice Sunk," referring to his wartime service.

I have never really been into popular music or much folk music.  I had heard of Woody Guthrie and recognized his voice in the songs we heard in the museum.  I am really familiar with this song he wrote.  It was popular during the time I was in college.

The museum has a temporary special exhibit about Pete Seeger, another protest singer who was inspired by Guthrie.  He was writing songs about disarmament and the environment and protested the Viet Nam War. For a while he was blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.  I remember more of this music, including "If I Had a Hammer," "Turn, Turn, Turn," and "Where are All the Flowers Gone?"

We find museums like this one very informative.  They also show us how out of touch we have always been with popular culture--except for the anti-war protests during the 1960s and early 1970s when John was a Boulder policeman.

Tulsa

I have heard of Tulsa, Oklahoma, probably my whole live. But I must admit I never gave it much attention and never really thought of visiting. However, it is a good one-day trip east of Oklahoma City as we make our way to Missouri. Actually, we only planning to spend two or three days here before heading to Branson. We had reservations for a show and planned two nights in the Indian Point Campground on Table Rock Lake. However, there is a massive storm system moving from west to east. It is snowing in Colorado and raining hard off and on in Oklahoma and Missouri. It would mean we would have to travel in heavy rain. They had rain before we arrived and the ground is saturated so there are flash flood warnings through the whole area. We decided to stay put until it clears up on Monday, cancelling our two Branson reservations.

As it turns out, we have found a lot to do here.  The first two mornings we walked at the Oxley Nature Center next to the Tulsa Zoo. The environment here is very different from either Colorado or Arizona.  Look at all the green.

We checked out downtown Tulsa.  The city was growing in the 1920s and 30s and there are many Art Deco buildings like this Tulsa Union Depot.

When we first arrived, doing laundry was on the agenda.  We were delighted to find two cats hanging out in the office and laundry.  We really miss our two cats who used to travel with us so we got our kitty fix while washing clothes.  You can't really see it in this photo, but this first cat has a hair cut (fur cut?) so he looks like a lion.

This cat looks like our cat Partner.

We found a number of murals in one alley.  They all seem to relate to the Day of the Dead.

I had packed a couple of sandwiches for lunch during our trip into town.  Maybe we were still hungry because before returning to the RV we stopped in the Antoinette Bakery.  The sign in the window says "Eat Cake."  We didn't take that advice but I chose the mega Oreo cooking and John had the apple pie bar.  Both were very good.

There was more to see in Tulsa so stay tuned.