The Highway Revisited

I wrote the other day about State Highway 51 and some of our experiences growing up beside that highway.  I mentioned that it was originally designated Highway 33, was paved in 1924, and later became Highway 51.

One day I was talking to Dad and he was relating some stories to me.  He mentioned riding the train from Mannford to Keystone.  I asked why you would ride the train when it was only seven miles from one town to the other.  He pointed out to me that the highway didn't exist then and that you had to negotiate a long, winding series of dirt roads to make the trip.  A couple of years after he passed, I discovered this map on the internet.  It is from the US Geological Survey and is dated 1915.  If you look, you can see that there is no direct road from Mannford to Keystone, only the railroad.

To give you an idea of where everything is, the current city of Mannford is located just above and to the right of the "R" in what is shown of "Mannford" at the bottom of the map.

It's my understanding that the city of Mannford is getting ready to resurface the old highway from Basin Road west to the top of Gilman Hill.  It certainly needs it as the pavement is in really bad shape.  My only regret is that a set of animal tracks about 1/2 mile west of Basin Road will be covered up forever.  It has always amazed me that a dog or coyote ran across that concrete in 1924 and left his mark on that highway for many years!

The bridge over Salt Creek on Highway 51 was about 1 1/2 miles east of our house.  In the spring of 1957, there was severe flooding in the Cimarron River which backed up into Salt Creek and covered the bridge.  Dad was working in Tulsa and making the commute every day.  To get to work, he had to make a detour several miles out of his way to the south.  Fortunately, the flooding subsided after a few days.

We also had some neighbors to the east of us whose last name was Melton.  Their son, Chuck, had graduated from Mannford High in 1954.  He owned a Volkswagen beetle, the first one I ever saw.  They were touted as being so well constructed that they would float so Chuck rolled all the windows up and pushed his VW across the flooded bridge.  As a very impressionable 11 year old kid, I was awestruck that he could do that!

Another vivid memory I have of that era involved Mr. Kurtze's gasoline station on the west side of Keystone.  We would pull in there to get gas and Mr. Kurtze would pump it up into the glass bowl on the top of the old pump.  Then, while it was draining down into the car's tank, Dad and Mr. Kurtze would walk out to the well house behind the station.  Dad would return to the car with a paper sack containing a pint of whiskey. Oklahoma was still dry and Mr. Kurtze was the local bootlegger!  The State didn't vote liquor in until 1959.

In the summer of 1957, we moved from Mannford to Pampa, Texas, because the company Dad worked for, Franks Manufacturing Co., had relocated there.  Most weekends while we lived in Pampa we would load up and come to Mannford to keep the family home up.  Dad would put a big tool box in the trunk of the old '46 Ford which really weighted it down.  It seems that more times than not, we would get stopped by a Highway Patrolman, suspecting that we were carrying illegal whiskey!

The old highway held a lot of memories.  It was fun growing up beside it.