Escape to the Wichita Mountains

Oklahoma’s terrain undulates with small hills like much of the mid-south. The red clay and fall lasting into late November thrown enough curves to keep the view interesting. 

But mountains that would fit in Montana? Oklahoma has those too. You have to hunt for them, but miles of farms and oil rigs will eventually lead to one of the country’s most curious protected areas.

Coming west toward Lawton, the horizon suddenly shows an unexpected series of peaks. Lawton didn’t acquit itself well in the overcast afternoon, but who could concentrate on a small town when unexpected mountains loomed so close? 

 Lawton and neighboring Fort Sill do house the gravesite of Apache chief Geronimo (he spent the last twenty years of his life imprisoned and Fort Sill and died there), but it requires advanced notice to visit. 

After a right turn near Cache, the once-distant mountains have arrived. The Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge covers much of the island range, with private property claiming some peaks, including its tallest. 

 Not long after the entry sign, which boasts a carving of a bison, the park’s resident bison herd gave an appearance. A group of 20 or more quietly ate among the tall grasses. What little crowd the refuge received in November stopped to watch intermittently. I will always brake for bison. The calves of the year had lost their ruddy fur for the brown hues of their parents. 

While not especially well-known, these mountains are older than the Rockies and rich with ecological diversity as a one of the few sky islands dotting Oklahoma. The mountains might rise less than 1,000 feet above their bases, but they stand in stark contrast to the plains and their red soil. 

The 57,000-acre has been protected since 1901, the bison herd established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker attended the ceremony at which the bison were released, ending a three-decade absence after white hunters extirpated them in Oklahoma. 

Seeing what got saved feels like a miracle occurred. Longhorn cattle also graze among the native species for their historic role in the region. 

But the Wichita Mountains boast more species than anywhere in the region. Bison and elk have been reintroduced but ring-tailed cats, burrowing owls, prairie dogs, nine-banded armadillos and river otters. While some are not rare elsewhere, the refuge’s charter requires that it always serve as home to animals that have historically lived there. 

The mountains only rise 800 to 1,000 feet above the prairie, but they could pass for peaks elsewhere in the Mountain West. The range is 500 million years old. 

In many places, the rock crumbles or resembles piles of boulders. Massive boulders lie among forests and sometimes on plains below the peaks, a sign of how large the mountains might have loomed in the past. 

 As a wildlife refuge, hunting is allowed, and areas of the mountains were blocked off for elk hunting. Some might quarrel with the hunting, but the mountains are not a large sky island. Elk and bison populations (the latter are often turned over to reservations seeking to establish local herds) can only reach certain levels before the mountains can no longer support them. 

At Caddo Lake (not that one), a reservoir that sits at the base of several looming peaks, a smaller cluster of bison grazed on the hills. They almost looked like boulders on the hillside, a few random movements giving them away. 

On the refuge’s western side, the sharp mountains don’t recede even as the refuge turns into farmland. The mountains roll on. The peaks run all the way to Roosevelt, a small town outside the wildlife refuge, where flush creeks and cotton fields arise. The red soils resume their dominion. 

As they slipped back below the horizon, I marveled at the Wichita Mountains. These peaks have endured millions of years long than anything else in Oklahoma and have a long run before they crumble away.