MEDICINE PARK — The Medicine Park Economic Development Authority, which is exploring the possibility of turning a dugout farm within the city limits into a museum, wants to evaluate the property’s boundaries and features.
The authority voted unanimously Aug. 13 to either track down an existing survey of the MPEDA-owned property or hire a professional surveyor to prepare a new one. Armed with that information, the authority would consult the Oklahoma Historical Society about the project.
The authority needs a property survey before moving forward with the project, said Authority Chairman Matt Latham.
“I would rather know what we own there and exactly where it goes so we kind of get an idea, and then reach out to the Historical Society,” he said.
The authority already has created a committee to look into what it would take to restore the property.
Consulting the Historical Society
Authority member Noel Alsbrook has proposed restoring the dugout farm and converting it into a museum where high school students could learn about Oklahoma’s pre-statehood era.
“We have an opportunity to go way beyond just kind of making it nice,” he said. “I mean, an actual registered museum.”
Latham said he would like to invite representatives from the Historical Society to tour the site and talk about what the authority would need to do to make the property a period-specific museum. He said that could turn out to be an expensive project.
“If you go to the Oklahoma Historical Society and you want to make it historically accurate; there are a lot of requirements for how you get there,” Latham said. “I actually think it’s highly worthy of us having somebody from the Historical Society come look at it and figure out if it even warrants (the effort). Because it could be $200,000, it could be a million dollars to get it to where it meets the standards.”
Alsbrook said consulting the Historical Society could help the authority decide whether it can afford to move forward with the project.
“We at least should go down the road,” he said. “We may start down it and go, ‘Yeah, this is not feasible.’
“Or we might start down the road, and the Historical Society may become so genuinely excited about it that they’re like, ‘Hey, there’s this grant. Let’s apply for this.’”
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Eric Swanson is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years’ experience covering local government and criminal justice in Oklahoma, North Dakota and Kansas. He can be reached at eric.swanson@ swoknews.com.