View the unusual
tourismVarious museums across state present offbeat collections
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By David Zizzo
Published: October 26, 2008
A credit card application, rocks and some luggage — big deal, right?
What if the application has written on it: "Trailer for sale or rent,” the first line to Roger Miller’s "King of the Road,” scribbled there by the singer/songwriter himself as he composed the famous song?Mark Ekiss, curator at the Oklahoma Frontier Drug Store Museum in Guthrie, holds a bottle of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, made from herbs and used as a tonic for women in the late 1800s. Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman
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• Tom Mix Museum, Dewey. Mix played a cowboy in the movies — more than 300 of them, and most of them the silent type. But before that, he was a real cowboy, and he was the first marshal of the town of Dewey, where a museum dedicated to his memory stands. Besides the killer suitcases that struck Mix in the head as he swerved into a gully at a construction site in Arizona, the museum has saddles, boots, guns and photos of the actor plus a mock-up of his horse, Tony. Visitors also can watch some of Mix’s movies. Children like them, museum manager Peggy Berryhill said, but one youth had a complaint about a film: "It wasn’t in color.”
• Ok lahoma Frontier Drug Store Museum, Guthrie (www.drugmuseum.org). "Cocaine toothache drops” and free mail-order samples of heroine, strychnine, arsenic and opium — advertisements offering those substances and other strange concoctions are just a small part of what can be found at this museum. Many of the bottles on display have original labels and even original contents, said assistant curator Pamela Ekiss. "It’s almost impossible to remove the corks without damaging the artifacts,” she said. The museum, sponsored by the Oklahoma Pharmacy Heritage Foundation, also has some old physicians’ utensils and a dental chair with some "pretty scary-looking tools.”
• Forest Heritage Center, Beaver’s Bend State Park (www.forestry.ok.gov/forest-heritage-center-and-museum). The town of Clebit, complete with homes, workers and shops, would be packed on railroad cars and would be moved around. "They always kept the same name; they always kept the same post office,” state forester John Burwell said. Long before paved roads, timber towns such as Clebit were home for forestry workers crisscrossing the rough backcountry of southeastern Oklahoma, Burwell said. The heritage center preserves some of that history and features forestry tools and woodcarving displays.
• Twister Museum, Wakita (www.twistercountry.com). The movie "Twister,” filmed largely in Wakita, came out in 1996, but people still come from far away to see where it was made, Linda Wade said. "All over the world, actually,” said Wade, a medical technician. The museum was started by the local garden club after movie crews told residents people would visit the town "for a couple of years” because of the movie. Twelve years later, they’re still coming to see the photos, videos and debris from the simulated tornado damage. The main attraction: a sensor container that played a major role in the film. "I have one of the original Dorothys from the movie,” Wade said.

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