Mangum explores tourism, historical roots August 30, 2010
WILLIAM F. O’BRIEN The Edmond Sun
EDMOND — Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer has written about her youth in South Africa in an essay titled “A South African Childhood” that was included in a collection of her essays recently published under the title “Telling Times.” Gordimer grew up in the 1930s in a small town in the Transvaal region of that nation, and she wrote about how she was reminded of the farming communities she visited as a child when she saw the production of the play “Oklahoma” in Johannesburg in the 1950s.
Her town was a coal mining center, and she detailed how large manmade mountains of coal dust were in place throughout the area as a result of that mining. Some of those mountains of coal refuse had sprouted growth, and she wrote that “red earth had blown on to them to hold a growth of sparse grass and perhaps even a sinewy peppercorn or peach tree.”
A somewhat similar phenomenon can be observed in the sandy, rock-strewn land that adjoins the Quartz Mountains that are outside of Mangum in Southwestern Oklahoma, where single trees occasionally can be seen sprouting out of the dry land. Many of the rock formations appear to be at variance with traditional notions of the law of gravity. The terrain is similar to the Texas landscape that was shown in the recent movie “No Country For Old Men,” and it is noteworthy that much of that area was claimed by Texas until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1891 that it was in fact part of what was then Oklahoma Territory.
There is a historical marker outside of Mangum that marks the location where then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis met with Native American leaders in 1855 in an effort to settle the issues that divided them. Modern-day Mangum is a community of about 3,000 souls and serves as the county seat of Greer County. Cotton and wheat farming and cattle raising are the mainstays of the community’s economy. The town’s leaders are now seeking to develop it into a tourist destination, and the local Main Street organization has taken steps to revitalize its downtown area.
That program has resulted in an investment of more than $1 million in downtown Mangum during the past several years. The improvements are visible there in the form of several renovated retail establishments that constitute what is now called “artists alley” that sell art and antiques. And there are plans to set up a program for those who want to establish businesses in the downtown area, and to have local artists prepare a mural that shows the history of Mangum and Greer County.
Mangum also is home to a popular bed and breakfast that is operated by an individual who is from the Netherlands, Will Sanders. He explains that the surrounding area now hosts attractions such as a winery that people can tour in neighboring Lone Wolf, and that many guests at his establishment tour that winery and partake of its products.
Sanders also is a creator of Web pages for businesses in the area, and he has assisted several local companies in preparing Web sites that publicize their offerings. The community also hosts events throughout the year that are designed to bring people to it, and perhaps the best known one is the “Rattlesnake Derby” in which all of Mangum goes into a collective reptile dysfunction for several days in late April that includes the hunting of rattlesnakes and then crowing a teenage girl as the princess of the derby.
WILLIAM F. O’BRIEN is an Oklahoma City attorney.
