S.
W. Woodhouse at Lost City
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Artist: Wayne Cooper
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Sponsor: Sen. Nancy Riley
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Dedication: 4-16-03
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Size: 40" x 30"
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Type: Oil on Canvas
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5th Floor, North Senate Hallway
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Samuel Washington Woodhouse,
surgeon-naturalist, accompanied the 1849-50 Creek Indian
boundary survey. His work in the Indian Territory was one
of the first comprehensive natural history studies made
of the area.
His contributions to Reports
of the Survey of the Creek Indian Boundary Line were
his first as a government naturalist. Details of the
group’s activities are found in Woodhouse’s
three journals that were faithfully kept day by day during
the journey into Indian Territory. Many of his observations
were the first scientific notations of the geology and
wildlife of the territory.
On September 15, 1849, Woodhouse and his survey party camped
on the Arkansas River west of Tallassee. His diary entry
for the day contains a sketch of an outcropping and the following
passage, “It presented a strange appearance, looking
at a short distance like an old fortification and when you
got near they looked as though they had been raised up out
of the earth. They were of all sizes and were only on top
of the hills.”
The outcropping was the weathered
limestone formation known historically as “Lost City,” which
reaches 50 feet in thickness on the south side of the Arkansas
River, near present day Sand Springs, Oklahoma.
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