MEDICINE PARK — The Medicine Park Economic Development Authority took the first step June 18 toward converting a dugout farm within the town limits into a museum.
The authority voted 3-0 to establish a committee that will look into restoring the dugout farm, which belongs to MPEDA, as a museum. Trustees Katrina Janz and Rich Amadon were absent.
The farm could become a resource for students who are learning about Oklahoma’s early days, Trustee Noel Alsbrook said in an interview after the meeting.
“A museum focused on Oklahoma high school students going through their Oklahoma history class to come see —
___________ _____ once the committee can get together and restore it — what someone in 1899 would have lived in, right here on the trade route going into Fort Sill,” he said.
Dugouts were dwellings, shelters or other structures that were built partially or wholly below ground, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society’s Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. They were often carved into the sides of hills, banks or ravines and enclosed by a front wall made of sod or logs.
The roof was supported by logs or poles that extended for the length of the structure.
The Medicine Park dugout was probably built in the late 1800s, before Oklahoma became a state, Alsbrook said in a June 23 phone interview. He said the dugout could have served as a settler’s home or a trading post, given its proximity to Fort Sill and a local trade route.
The newly established committee will seek sources of funding to cover the cost of converting the property into a museum, Alsbrook said. He said the board will also secure the property to protect it from vandalism, then begin working with historians to determine what it would have looked like in the pre-statehood era.
“And then, we’ll basically rebuild the dugout like it would have been built originally,” he said.
People who are interested in donating to the project or serving on the committee may contact Town Hall at (580) 5292825.
Eric Swanson is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years’ experience covering local government and criminal justice in Oklahoma, Kansas and North Dakota. He can be reached at eric.swanson@ swoknews.com.