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

What if the rocks were naturally formed into shapes such as poodles, but mostly roses, from minerals found in this form in no other place in the world? And what if the pieces of luggage are "killer suitcases” that struck Tom Mix, killing the legendary cowboy movie actor?

These are just a few of the unusual things you can find in unusual museums across Oklahoma.

But you no longer can see the more than 30,000 lighters at the National Lighter Museum, a collection that owner Ted Ballard said was "known all over the world.”

That museum was left in "limbo” because of a zoning dispute with the city of Guthrie, Ballard said. And other collections are not quite ready for the public. The Oklahoma Pottery Museum is still being planned in Sapulpa, and the Museum of Osteology, showcasing various skeletons, including that of a 40-foot humpback whale, is expected to be open next year in Oklahoma City.

But plenty of others are ready with their histories of whatever, from windmills to percussive instruments to the oil industry. Here are a few of them:

→Roger Miller Museum in Erick (www.rogermillermuseum.com). People from around the world are still interested in the life and music of the prolific singer/songwriter who was raised in Erick, said Glenda West, museum board chairman. "Every day, they come,” she said. "It’s really surprising.” A fan from Australia once spent three days at the museum, she said. There is plenty to see, including gold records, Miller’s high school FFA jacket and a 1965 Honda 150 motorcycle Miller was riding on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles when he was stopped by a limousine. "My boss would like your autograph,” West said the driver told Miller. The man in the back of the limo was Elvis Presley.

→Timber lake Rose Rock Museum, Noble (www.roserockmuseum.com). These days, so many things are cheap and superficial, Nancy Stine said. "Nature these days is a little hard to come by.” But Nancy and husband Joe since 1971 have run a business based on strange barium sulfate crystals that formed naturally over millions of years. A narrow band of these "rose rocks” runs north to south through Oklahoma, the only place where the true, rose-shaped and rose-colored crystals are found, she said. The Stines lease land near their home and museum where they search for rose rocks, some of which are shaped like poodles, teddy bears or other things besides roses.

• 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.