Oklahoma Turns 109

via Oklahoma Historical Society

Today is Oklahoma's 109th year of statehood, becoming a state on this day November 16th 1907. That day in Guthrie they held an inauguration parade for Oklahoma's first governor Charles N. Haskell. Haskell was born in Ohio but made his way to Muskogee via a business venture in a rail line that ran from Fayetteville, Arkansas. After serving as a delegate to the Sequoya's Constitutional Convention in 1905, he won the vote for Oklahoma's first governor by nearly 30,000 votes. The population of both Oklahoma and Indian Territory where a combined 1,414,177. According to the election board website there were three candidates on the ballot. Democratic nominee Haskell received 134,162 votes and Republican Frank Frantz received 106,507 votes and Socialist candidate Joseph Hanna received 9,678 votes . There were a total of 250,409 votes cast. That is 17% of the population at the time. Considering the era that isn't half bad. In 109 years we have only increased that to 39% of the Oklahoma population voting.

via Maps Etc

The town of Haskell, Oklahoma is named after our first governor as well as Haskell County.  You can also thank Mr. Haskell for getting Oklahoma started on the "dry" side of the alcohol laws by writing prohibition into our constitution. It wasn't till 1933, coincidentally the same year that Charles Haskell died, that they introduced the sale of beer in Oklahoma.

via Chickasaw.tv 

But this is not about liquor laws and such, its about becoming a state. It is celebrating the day our great state actually became a recognized state and not just a territory anymore.

Just for fun here are some other things that
happened around the state and the world in 1907.
The week before we became a state the 3rd Bedlam game was held in Norman between Oklahoma A&M and University of Oklahoma. Which might I add if you look on the map above the University of Oklahoma was actually in Indian Territory so Oklahoma State fans can say that they are the original university in Oklahoma.

However, I digress.  As most of you probably know the Chicago Cubs won the world series in 1907. Royal Oil and Shell merge to form British Petroleum (BP). The worlds first air force was established by the US Army. The famous Pike Place Market was dedicated in Seattle. Lot's of things happened in 1907 but by far the most important was on November 16th 1907, live it up Oklahoma you're getting up there!

What do Will Rogers and bowl games have in common?

With bowl season just getting started and all the state schools playing in bowl games around the country it got me thinking about our states history with bowl games. Have we ever hosted a bowl game? Yes, we have the first in 1947 the inaugural and subsequently the last year for the Will Rogers Bowl held in Oklahoma City. The two lucky teams were Pepperdine University and Nebraska Wesleyan University. The night before the big game a storm blew in leaving snow and cold temperatures in it's path with a high for the day at 30° only 800 people showed up for the game. It was held on January 1, 1947 at 2:30 p.m. at Taft Stadium. Pepperdine won the game 38-13 and it is their one and only bowl appearance as they do not play football at the school anymore. 

 

Pepperdine bus with the Will Rogers Bowl banner 

 

Promotional photo for the bowl game Pepperdine Coach Warren Gaer (L) player Dennis Horn, and Will Rogers Jr. pose with a photo of Will Rogers.

 Taft Stadium was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1934 it had a capacity at the time of 18,200 it was and still is located at  NW 23rd and May Ave. The stadium is currently home to Northwest Classen and John Marshall High School football teams. It has seen everything from the Oklahoma bowl games, stock car racing, soccer, and countless high school football games. It was recently "remodeled" but looks to me that it is a shell of what it once was. 

There is not a whole lot of information that I was able to find about this game as far as advertising or pictures but seeing how only 800 people showed up I guess it wasn't that big of a deal at the time. However, there is a very interesting 27 minute silent video of the game if you have the time take a look at it, the link will be at the bottom of the page. I took some screen shots of the video just to show some scenes from it as well.

It was brought to my attention that there were also four other bowl games played at Taft stadium called the All-Sports Bowl from 1961-64 all included a team from Oklahoma.

1961: Oklahoma Panhandle -28 vs. Langston 14 (8,000 people in attendance)
1962: Nebraska-Omaha - 34 vs. East Central 21 (2,500 people in attendance)
1963: Northeastern St. - 59 vs. Slippery Rock 12 (attendance unknown)
1964: Sul Ross St - 21 vs. East Central 13 (attendance unknown)

Players warming up before the game.

It seems like there are bowl games everywhere now and there are, 40 games to be exact.  The University of Tulsa will travel to Shreveport, Louisiana which has a population of 446,471 in the metro area. Which shows there is no reason we don’t have a bowl in Oklahoma! Oklahoma City is roughly 1.4 million people in the metro area and Tulsa is just under a million. Why can’t we be one of the 40 bowl games that smaller cities around the country host and bring money into their states by doing so? I wish I had an answer for everyone reading, I don’t know if it’s just because we don’t want one or don’t think we have the facilities to handle one which is probably the case. Norman would be the most plausible place to play a bowl game. I do think it is time our state pushes to bring back the Will Rogers Bowl or shall I say the Devon Energy Will Rogers Bowl or something along those lines, it won't bring 900 million into the state to offset the deficit, but it wouldn't hurt. Oklahoma deserves another chance to show the country that we can bring more people out to a bowl game in our great state. 

Taft Stadium before remodel

Close up of Taft Stadium scoreboard 1947

Will Rogers Bowl Trophy 

1947 Will Rogers Bowl game footage

Taft Stadium picture via: Waymarking

Pictures of run down Taft Stadium before the remodel: Daily Oklahoman

Info on Taft Stadium: Daily Oklahoman

Trophy and Will Rogers Jr. pictures from Pepperdine Archives

All other pictures are screen shots from the video link above. 

Bowl scores NCAA

If anyone has any pictures of the All-Sports Bowls held at Taft Stadium I would love to see them and will ad them to the page with permission.

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Email at okhistorypics@gmail.com