U.S. Highway 59 project approved
From the files of Your Sequoyah County Times
This Week in County History
— Sequoyah County Times, Jan. 8, 1998
From the files of Your Sequoyah County Times
25 Years Ago
(From Jan. 4 and 8, 1998, issues of the Sequoyah County Times) –Officials of the Cherokee Nation will be taking a letter, written by U.S. Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Muskogee), to a meeting of the State Waterways Board in Tulsa Tuesday.
In his letter, Coburn re-emphasizes his opposition to the transfer of land from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Cherokee Nation. The land in question is the nearly-abandoned Sallisaw Creek Public Use Area at the south end of Dwight Mission Road. The Cherokee Nation and corps have been working on a land transfer involving about 700 acres of the public use area which the corps no longer maintains.
—A four-lane highway between Sallisaw and Poteau, and the economic benefits such a highway will bring to both communities, got the green-light signal this week.
State Sen. Larry Dickerson of Poteau and State Rep. J.T. Stites of Sallisaw announced the approval of the U.S. Highway 59 improvements Tuesday, while Gov. Frank Keating along with legislative leaders and Neal McCaleb, announced the highway project in Oklahoma City Monday and Tuesday.
50 Years Ago
(From the Dec. 28, 1972, issue of the Sequoyah County Times) —Sallisaw merchants will again sponsor a “First Baby of the Year” contest in Sequoyah County. Many valuable gifts are being offered as well as a $10 cash gift to the first baby born in 1973.
—Phil Norton, assistant manager of the Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge, and several alert Tulsa hunters were involved in rescuing four careless duck hunters from the cold refuge waters last Friday.
Morris LeFever, refuge manager, said that four duck hunters from Tulsa were hunting on the refuge when their small boat capsized in about six feet of water. LeFever said all four hunters stood up in the boat to shoot at a passing duck which caused the boat to overturn.
75 Years Ago
(From the Jan. 2, 1948, issue of the Sequoyah County Times) —They are standing in line these days up in Fred Campbell Jr.’s auto license tag office. According to Fred, Wednesday almost 300 plates have been issued here to Sequoyah County auto and truck owners since the sale of the 1948 plates began shortly before Christmas.
The new tags are full size plates, painted yellow with black letters and numbers superimposed on them.
—A new grade school building for Vian in 1948 appeared likely this week when news was revealed that the school board there had purchased a number of buildings from War Assets Administration. The structures are now located on the site of Camp Gruber, near Muskogee.
From the ex-Army camp building, the Vian school authorities announce that a five-room building, 90×54 feet, will be constructed replacing the antiquated brick structure now housing the Vian grade school children, which will be used as a storage warehouse.
100 years ago
(From the Dec. 29, 1922, issue of the Sequoyah County Democrat) —Two men are dead and members of the engine crew badly injured and numbers of box cars demolished is the toll resulted from an open switch which railroad officials openly declare was an attempt to wreck train number 116, the Rainbow Special, which is one of the two Missouri-Pacific fast mail trains, early Tuesday morning between Vian and Gore in this county.
Two men identified by the sheriff’s office as Alex Plansett of Garfield, Ark., and F.E. Reichert of Little Rock, Ark., were beating their way on the freight train and were killed when the box car which they were riding in was hurled from the track down a steep embankment twenty feet below. The wreck occurred about three o’clock Tuesday morning and it was not until the wrecking crew began to clear away the debris that they found the bodies of the two men horribly crushed in a battered freight car. The men were beating their way enroute to the western country according to the authorities.
The freight train was enroute from Van Buren going north and passed through Sallisaw at 1:30 a.m. and would have gone on a siding at Gore to let the Rainbow Special pass, which was due in Sallisaw at 2 a.m.
The engine and twelve freight cars were thrown into the ditch.
It has been learned that a large automobile had been parked near the place where the Rainbow Special was to be trapped at the switch and numerous footprints were around the car which evidently had been held in waiting for the Rainbow Special train to be wrecked and looted.
—Last week a dog belonging to a farmer living at the foothills of the mountains known as Badger Lee mountain, four miles north of this city brought the skull of a woman to the farm house door. The authorities here were immediately notified of the gruesome find and a search was immediately started to unravel the mystery and to find the rest of the remains.
Christmas day a party searching the whole mountain side under the direction of Sheriff C.M. Gay, found the skeleton of a woman on the steep mountain side far from any road or habitation.
The woman had evidently been murdered or committed suicide and the body left to the elements and the ravages of beasts in the mountains and the dogs of farmers living in the valley below.
Sheriff Gay thinks that the woman was a Mrs. Joe Ferrell of Fort Smith who came to this city during a Carnival in October, and suddenly disappeared from the hotel where she was stopping, but there has been no positive identification, and this, like many other mysteries that have happened in this county, may go on as one of those never to be solved. However, a murder charge may develop as it is whispered around that two or three other women have disappeared from here during the past year, and a thorough investigation may involve well-known characters when the mystery is finally solved.
