OklahomaHorses Magazine July 2023

26 OklahomaHorses • July / August 2023 Dog Iron Ranch Will Rogers’ Birthplace Returns to Cherokee Roots by Rowena Mills I t was a sunny but cool day in 1960. My grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins were going on one of their favorite outings. They had made occasion- al visits to Will Rogers’ birthplace ranch on the Verdigris River and to Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore since the late 1930s, shortly after famous entertainer Will Rogers’ death in 1935. Those were favorite places for them to take out-of-state visitors or just to go on their own. They had heard that the big white house where Rogers was born in 1879 had been moved to avoid flooding when Oologah Lake was con- structed. They were excited to discover the new location of the house, a little farther west than its original site. What my family did not realize was that the house was a long way from being reopened for visitors yet. In fact, it was not a proper house at that time but just huge stacks of sandstone blocks, timbers, and other building material on a vacant hill in Rogers County, each piece numbered and waiting to be reassembled. My relatives were disappointed, but it was also an impressive and instructive sight. Who knew a house, even a house as big as that one, had that much material in it? The Rogers home was later reconstructed and opened to the public. It eventually looked so settled that it seemed to have been on that hill always. And now the In this 1938 photo, the birthplace of Will Rogers, Oklahoma’s favorite son, is shown in its original location on the Verdigris River near Oologah. Later, the house was moved about a mile west when Oologah Lake was formed. Photo courtesy of the estate of Helen Cox Mills.