Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

Hello all, sorry it has been awhile since our last post. JJ is getting ready for hunting season. Bow season starts tomorrow so I will be officially widowed this weekend :(. It won't be too bad, my nephew is going to come and stay with me Friday night, then the OU game Saturday night will keep me occupied. So that will pass the time when JJ is gone. I also went back to coaching a couple of weeks ago so that is fun.

Last weekend, JJ, Gigi and Grandad and I all took a mini vacation to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge is located in southwestern Oklahoma near Lawton and it has protected unique wildlife habitats since 1901. It is the oldest managed wildlife facility in the U.S. fish and wildlife service system. The Refuge measures about 59,020 acres (238.8 km2) and hosts a great diversity of species: 806 plant species, 240 kinds of bird, 36 fish, and 64 reptiles and amphibians are present. The Wichitas are approximately 500 million years old.

After leaving the Refuge, we stopped in at Medicine Park for some lunch and some shopping. Medicine Park is a town in Comanche County, that is situated in the Wichita Mountains, near the entramce to the 60,000 acre Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge. Medicine Park has a long history as a vintage cobblestone resort town. Many of the original structures in Medicine Park are constructed out of naturally formed cobblestones which are unique to the Wichita Mountains.

After leaving Medicine Park, we drove into Lawton and onto Fort Sill. Today, Fort Sill remains the only active Army installation of all the forts on the South Plains built during the Indian Wars. Fort Sill is designated as a National Historic Landmark and serves as the home of the United States Army Field Artillery School as well as the US Marine Corps' site for Field Artillery MOS school, United States Army Air Defense Artillery School, the 75th Fires Brigade and the 214th Fires Brigade. Fort Sill is also one of the five locations for Army Basic Combat Training.

In 1894 Geronimo and 341 other Chiricahua Apache prisoners of war were brought to Fort Sill where they lived in villages on the range. Geronimo was granted permission to travel for a while with Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show and he visited President Theodore Roosevelt before dying of pneumonia in 1909. The rest of the Apaches remained on Fort Sill until 1913.