The history of Ponca City is a brief history when compared to the history of cities elsewhere in the world or even in the United States. Actually, the town came into being within the span of a single afternoon. On September 16, 1893, when the Cherokee Outlet was opened to outside settlement, a number of people staked their claims to town lots along the Santa Fe Railroad and proclaimed the new town. This land run took place with a dramatic rush of white people into this area from the Kansas border twenty-odd miles to the north represented a final and permanent dispossession of land that had previously been unfenced, that had been granted and guaranteed to Native Americans in return for giving up lands elsewhere. It also represented the effort of the homesteaders flocking into the area to find their own refuge where they would no longer be hounded by the forces of dispossession. The town that these people built reflected these new hopes. With about two thousand people, the new town had a steam flour mill operating, had a railroad depot and a train to stop at it, new grain elevators, and a hotel. An opera house held forth in the second floor of a grocery downtown and the town soon established a water well in the middle of Grand Avenue. Downtown Ponca City was starting to take shape. When fire destroyed a dozen buildings on the north side of Grand Avenue between Second and Third in 1900, including the Pabst Building, the city rebuilt, but this time in brick, the favored material of construction from thence forward. Stone buildings on the south side of Grand Avenue, like the Stewart Building at the southeast corner of Grand and Third and the stone building where George Brett for a while had his farm implement store at the southeast corner of Grand and First, possibly stood out all the more after this, contrasting the light, locally-quarried limestone with the increasing numbers of red brick buildings around them.
This virtual will take you to two very important methods of transportation used for people that did the Oklahoma Land run. At each site there will be a couple questions you have to answer to prove to me that you actually visited the site. This should not take you over 20 minutes to complete.
At the posted coordinates please send me the answers to the following questions:
1. What is in the young man's left hand?
2. From the southeast corner of the bricks that have names on them, give me the names on the brick that is 58 rows north and 7 bricks to the west. (The one between Cox to the west and Randolph to the east.
Now go to N 36° 42.602 W 097° 03.966- Pioneer Courage
3. On the bench to the Southwest of this statue, how many rays of sunshine are coming out of the sun?
4. Whom is this bench in Memory Of?
ENJOY THE STATUES AND ALL THAT THEY REPRESENT.
Virtual Rewards 2.0 - 2019/2020
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between June 4, 2019 and June 4, 2020. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 2.0 on the Geocaching Blog.