The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 54, July 1950 - April, 1951 Page: 270
544 p. : ill., ports., maps. (some col.) ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
have a clear sky & a continual current of fresh air charged with
the sweet mirads of prairie flowers. What a field for the painter
of rich scenery! ! The only unfavourable feature of this country
is that it has not quite a sufficiency of wood for fuel. For building
there is an abundance of rock.
The mountains were entered on May io at the gap above the
present station of Odetta and west of Eagle, Bat Cave, and Charon
Garden mountains-all peaks in the Wichitas. Just as surely as
the expedition organized at Fort Johnson, did it go through the
Wichita Mountains along the Cooperton Gap. The Cooperton
Gap thus becomes a "bench mark" for the trail. It must be noted
that the expedition went through a pass-there were mountains
on both sides; this means that the Wichitas were not skirted as
they might have been without too much difficulty either to the
east or to the west. The Cooperton Gap, extending between the
main body of the mountains and western outliers, is a pass with-
out a perceptible climb, and it is identifiable by the distinctive
plum-blue colored haze ahead. The Cooperton Gap is the only
way through the Wichitas which has this characteristic-a phe-
nomenon which gave its name to Blue Mountain, situated about
a mile north of lofty Baker Peak, Miller's "rugged mountain"
which reaches an elevation of 2,457 feet.
Originally the Cooperton Valley was a part of the Kiowa and
Comanche Reservation. When the area was thrown open to white
settlement, the grass was still "belly deep on a good horse." It
was a buffalo shangri-la; thus it was in keeping with the fitness
of things in nature that the Snively Expedition moving through
this buffalo land should be skirting what would become the
western boundary of the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge,
where probably more has been done to preserve the buffalo than
at any other one place in the nation.
The expedition probably camped for the night in the vicinity
of the present headquarters of the well-known O + Ranch, where
the absence of timber and the "abundance of rock" led the W. A.
Fullingims, father and son, to build out of native stone one of
the most colorful ranch homes in western America. The "healthy
climate" which Miller noted is also borne out, for in 1947 the
elder Fullingim was ninety-three, his wife was ninety, and theira270
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 54, July 1950 - April, 1951, periodical, 1951; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101133/m1/382/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.