Day 2: Eureka, Missouri, to Pawhuska, Oklahoma
Distance: 392 miles
Route: I-44 southwest to Vinita, OK; U.S. 60 west to Pawhuska, OK
Highlights: The drive west on I-44 from Eureka, Missouri, to Oklahoma is an amalgamation of strangeness, displayed prominently on the billboards along the highway, which parallels the famed Route 66. There are signs for the Jesse James Wax Museum, the Andy Dalton Shooting Range (named not for the soon-to-be-ex Cincinnati Bungles QB, but a former conservation commissioner from the southwest Missouri) and every Ozark-area cave, crevice and cavern. Speaking of crevices, the Uranus Fudge Factory is a top attraction. Their email signup page begs you to “Probe Uranus Deeper.” Hell is real.
I’m in full drive mode, so my only pause was to make some pee-pee and buy gas at the Stoutland Eagle Stop, where I met the GM, Denise. She told me about a nearly 100-year-old iron bridge across the Gasconade River that “you just have to see!” So I did the extremely rare 4-mile backtrack on Route 66 to take a look (see photos below). There’s a local movement (the Gasconade River Bridge Guardians) to save the bridge, with a stewardship decision pending February 22.
I exit at Vinita, Oklahoma, and take Route 60 west through Bartlesville, home to the original Phillips Petroleum Company (founded 1917) and the Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower (1956). I’m headed to Pawhuska, a name unknown to me only a week ago. I had asked a friend from western Kansas if he knew of any interesting towns along my route. “Weird and fascinating” was what he said about Pawhuska. Sold.
Pawhuska is the seat of The Osage Nation tribal government. It’s also the center of what I learned to be a much larger nation – an empire, in fact. That’s because Pawhuska is home to Ann Marie “Ree” Drummond, the Pioneer Woman. That’s the hit TV show (since 2011) on the Food Network, where Drummond documents her family’s 400,000+-acre ranch life and posts videos on how to make a patty melt. The ranch is the 17th largest private property in the United States, and more than 30 times the size of Manhattan.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Pioneer Woman owns half of sleepy Pawtuska. And she’s also accountable for what I would call the town’s Pioneer Woman prices. My fried chicken steak, mashed potatoes, ice tea and slice of pecan pie dinner ran $40 (including tip) at the impressive Mercantile (open since October 2016), which houses a bakery, restaurant and all the Pioneer Woman merchandise you can stand.
Down the street, you’ve got the eight-room (Pioneer Woman) Boarding House hotel ($169-$279). More appealing, IMO, is the Frontier Hotel ($100-$169, open since mid-2018), a redevelopment of the historic Triangle Building, built in 1915 and on the National Register of Historic Places. I opted for the groovier – and cheaper, at around $80 per night – Historic Whiting Hotel, which used to be efficiency apartments for oil field workers in the 1920s.
Outside of the Pioneer Woman, who is often seen inside the Mercantile, the main attraction in Pawhuska is the Ben Johnson Cowboy Museum. Ben Johnson is the only human to win an Academy Award (for “The Last Picture Show“) and a rodeo world championship (for team roping). That fact, plus the horse sculptures of artist John D. Free and video of the “one-armed bandit” cowboy John Payne are worth the price of admission.
If that’s not enough Hollywood for you, Pawhuska will soon host Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in the Martin Scorsese thriller (out in 2021), “Killers of the Flower Moon,” based on the best seller by David Grann. The story is so vile and depraved that I bought the book on the spot at the local supermarket, Pawhuska Hometown Foods – NOT at the Mercantile. Sorry Pioneer Woman!
Next stop: Santa Rosa, New Mexico
