Today’s postcard from a 1940 Oklahoma souvenir pack is of Will Rogers’ birthplace near Claremore. The home still stands, but it is now about a mile away from where it was located when the postcard was printed.

The Dog Iron Ranch in Oologah had to be moved in 1960 to prevent it from being flooded by the creation of Lake Oologah. The current property of about 400 acres is a fraction of the original 60,000-acre ranch operated by Will’s father, and it originally had up to 10,000 Texas Longhorn cattle. The two-story house was completed by Clem Rogers in 1875, four years before Will was born.

Will left the ranch around 1905 and pursued an entertainment career in Hollywood. He became one of the highest-paid actors in the 1930s, appearing in over 70 films, and had a syndicated newspaper column and made many radio appearances. He died in 1935 when he and aviator Wiley Post crashed in Alaska on what was meant to be a leisurely trip around the world.

The Dog Iron Ranch was opened to public in the 1960s after the move, and the Oklahoma Historical Society sold it to the Cherokee Nation in 2023. It has since closed the ranch for over a year for renovations. Both Will’s mother and father were Cherokees.

Below is a documentary short exploring the difference between the “Rogers Ranch” and the “Dog Iron Ranch”.

A Bartlesville Connection

In December 1859, James Leontine Butler, an intermarried Cherokee, established an early trading post and post office at Black Dog Ford just south of modern-day Oak Park Village in Bartlesville. Butler Creek is named for his family. During the Civil War, he recruited a unit of Cherokee Mounted Rifles that included Clement Rogers. After the war, Clem resettled his family near Ft. Gibson, saving for four years before returning to the Cherokee Nation to start building their new home in 1870. Meanwhile, Butler had departed for Texas, where he had died in 1866 at age 33.

The ranch house is just a couple of miles north of the Skull Hollow Nature Trail that I’ve hiked multiple times.

Back in 1995, fellow science teacher Lynne Shaw and I toured the Northeast Power Plant at Lake Oologah. I created a slideshow of our tour which I eventually turned into a video.

Since that tour, one of the two coal-fired generators has been retired, and the other is slated to close by the end of 2026. Public Service Company of Oklahoma might convert or replace some existing boiler units to add more natural-gas fired generators at the facility.

Tomorrow’s postcard will take a just a ways down the road to Claremore.