Visit the Wichita Mountains · Fort Sill (by WMVL)

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Visit the Wichita Mountains · Fort Sill (by WMVL) Explore the Wichita Mountains, Ft Sill, Lawton. Amazing landscape, sunsets, wildlife, hiking, history. We don't host, sponsor, or profit from events, festivals

festivals, Western & Native American Culture, live music, water sports, fishing & hunting. The Wichita Mountains Lodge management is a resource to the community, families, guests, travelers, businesses, and groups interested in or living near the Wichita Mountains, Fort Sill, and Southwestern Oklahoma. We provide information about area sites, events, activities, entertainment, festivals, and businesses. Call us when you are ready to plan your trip. We understand you don’t visit our area to stay at the Wichita Mountains Lodge properties or another Airbnb. You visit to have great times with your family and see unique and unusual sites, wildlife, or area features you can’t have or see anywhere else. The correct information to achieve this goal is how we can best support your “why” for visiting us. This site provides tourism and travel information for the public. We do not profit from, sponsor, nor are we affiliated with the festivals, events, entertainment, and sites of the area in anyway. Call me to learn more at 571.228.5074.

10/21/2026

Prairie dogs may be gossiping about you. Researchers say their calls describe size, shape and clothing. 🐾

When a prairie dog spots a predator, it sounds an alarm. But biologist Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University spent decades studying those calls and found they carry more than “danger.” They can name the kind of predator, such as a hawk, coyote, dog or human, and describe its size and shape. In tests, the calls even changed with the color of a person’s shirt.

Most of that research was done on Gunnison’s prairie dogs, a relative of the black-tailed prairie dogs at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. Black-tailed prairie dogs have their own system of twelve distinct calls, and they also keep a lookout so the whole colony can dive for cover.

Whether that counts as a true language is still debated among scientists. But next time you walk past a prairie dog, remember that someone may be keeping notes on what you’re wearing.

👇 What color shirt do you think they’d say you’re wearing?

Summer, 1852.Captain Randolph B. Marcy led a company of the Fifth Infantry north from Fort Belknap, Texas.Riding with hi...
10/21/2026

Summer, 1852.

Captain Randolph B. Marcy led a company of the Fifth Infantry north from Fort Belknap, Texas.
Riding with him was Captain George B. McClellan, a young engineer who would later become a famous Civil War general.

Their mission was to explore the land north of Red River and find where the river began.
They charted rivers, collected plants and animals, and studied the rocks. They named Otter Creek, Elk Creek, and Mount Webster.

On July 18, they camped at the foot of the tallest peak in the Wichita Mountains. Marcy named it Mount Scott, after General Winfield Scott.
Then they followed Medicine Bluff Creek east.
The officers climbed Medicine Bluff and rode to a quiet knoll nearby.

There they found an abandoned Wichita village. The lodge frames were still standing, with dry cornstalks rising among the weeds.
Marcy believed it was the perfect place for a military post.

Washington didn’t act on it.
Seventeen years later, Fort Sill was built on that very spot.

Have you stood on top of Mount Scott?

10/21/2026

In 1934, a newspaper called this lake “a delightful place to swim.” Today, swimming is banned. 🌊

Post Oak Lake sits in the Charon’s Garden area of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, right beside Treasure Lake. The Civilian Conservation Corps built its dam in a single summer, from June to August 1933, and a 1934 newspaper described the dam as 25 feet high and 100 feet long.

So what changed? Swimming is now prohibited across the refuge, which manages its lakes first for its large wildlife.

👇 Would you have jumped in back in 1934?

10/21/2026

Guess which Wichita Mountains peak is taller: Mount Scott or Mount Pinchot. 🏔️

Here’s the twist: the sources disagree. The Oklahoma Historical Society lists Mount Scott as the tallest in the refuge at 2,464 feet, with Mount Pinchot just behind at 2,461 feet. Other sources measure Pinchot higher, at 2,467 feet or more.

What isn’t in dispute is which one you can actually visit. Mount Pinchot sits in a Special Use Area of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge and is closed to the public. Mount Scott is the highest peak you can reach, and you can drive almost to the top. A three-mile paved road, officially opened in 1938, winds up to a summit with views across the refuge.

Mount Scott is named for General Winfield Scott, and its Comanche name, Pisaroya, means “Big Mountain.” Mount Pinchot is named for Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

👇 Which is your guess? And have you driven up Mount Scott?

The Wichita Mountains have more than granite rock and great hiking trails, it has more than wildlife and lakes.The Wichi...
10/21/2026

The Wichita Mountains have more than granite rock and great hiking trails, it has more than wildlife and lakes.

The Wichita Mountains have the beauty and peace that comes from being surrounded by everything nature has to offer.

10/20/2026

She was taken from her family as a young girl. By the time they found her, she didn't want to come back. 💔

Her name was Cynthia Ann Parker. In 1836, a Comanche raid on her family's settlement in Texas carried her away. The Comanche adopted her, gave her the name Naduah, and over nearly 25 years, she became one of them.

She married Peta Nocona, a Comanche chief, and they had three children: Quanah, Pecos, and a little girl named Prairie Flower.

In 1860, Texas Rangers found her and brought her back, along with baby Prairie Flower. She was returned to her birth family, but her heart was still with the Comanche. She tried to return to them more than once.

When Prairie Flower died of illness, Cynthia Ann was heartbroken, and she died a few years later.

Her son never forgot her. Quanah grew up to become the last free chief of the Comanches, and in 1910 he had his mother's grave moved to Oklahoma. In 1957, mother and son were laid to rest side by side at Fort Sill.

Their story became so famous that it inspired one of Hollywood's greatest Westerns, "The Searchers."

Had you ever heard of Cynthia Ann Parker? 👇

📌 Save this to visit them at Fort Sill someday.
📤 Share her story with someone who'd want to know it.
➕ Follow for more true stories from Southwest Oklahoma.

10/20/2026

In the 1920s, Fort Sill was burning, and it wasn’t an accident. 🔥

One building after another went up in flames until dozens were gone. When the arsonists were finally caught, the answer shocked the whole post. According to a Fort Sill history book, most of them were members of the post’s own fire department and security staff.

And Fort Sill still wasn’t done with fire. In 1929, Snow Hall burned to the ground. A year later, Fort Sill was named the permanent home of the Field Artillery.

What would you have done if you found out who was behind it? 👇

10/20/2026

20,000 trees, 6 feet apart. Here’s the real reason they were planted. 🌲

Let’s go back to the spring of 1912.

The Wichita Mountains had been set aside as a forest reserve in 1901, and years of cattle grazing had left parts of the land stripped of trees. Frank Rush, the supervisor in charge, started a series of tree plantings across the reserve. The biggest and best known was planted at the foot of Mount Scott.

It was 20,000 eastern red cedars, set exactly six feet apart in every direction across about 16 acres. The plan was practical: the trees were meant to supply wood for future park projects.

Then the land became protected, and the trees could no longer be cut down. So they kept growing, in the same perfect rows, for more than a century.

Today it’s called the Parallel Forest, and its eerie symmetry has made it famous for ghost stories and legends. You may also have read that it was a Dust Bowl experiment, but the Dust Bowl didn’t begin until the 1930s, long after these trees went in.

A forest planted for lumber. A grid that became a legend.

👇 Have you walked through it? Did it feel haunted or peaceful?

Picture Fort Sill’s Old Post: stone buildings, a wide parade ground, and a flagpole reaching into the Oklahoma sky.Among...
10/20/2026

Picture Fort Sill’s Old Post: stone buildings, a wide parade ground, and a flagpole reaching into the Oklahoma sky.

Among those buildings stood a sturdy stone guardhouse.

It carries the name of Geronimo, the famed Chiricahua Apache war chief and medicine man who died at Fort Sill.

On December 11, 1934, the old Geronimo Guardhouse took on a new purpose.

It officially opened as the post museum.
The first collection was modest: uniforms, insignia, weapons, and other artifacts. Local Native families were enthusiastic donors.

Lieutenant Harry Larter founded the museum and served as its curator. Two soldiers helped him for a few hours each afternoon.

Major General Upton Birnie Jr., Chief of Field Artillery, came from Washington for the ceremony. He had been stationed at Sill in 1902, when Geronimo himself was a tourist attraction there.

From that small beginning, the museum grew into several of the Old Post’s historic stone buildings.
In 1962, the Old Post was designated a National Historic Landmark.

A story told in stone.
Have you ever walked the Old Post grounds?

10/20/2026

For years, people around Fort Sill called the Old Post Guardhouse the “Geronimo Hotel.” 🪶

Geronimo really was a prisoner of war at Fort Sill. He spent his last years there and is buried on post today. But according to Fort Sill’s history, he was only locked up in the guardhouse a handful of times, and only briefly.

Most of the time, he lived in a village with his people, farmed, and even sold his autographed photos to visitors. 😳

In 1934, the old guardhouse got a new job. It became the first Fort Sill Museum, home to cannons and treasured belongings of famous leaders like Quanah Parker and Geronimo himself.

Have you ever been inside the Old Guardhouse? 👇

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36 Ketch Creek Place
Medicine Park, OK
73507

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