Celebrating 135 years of green spaces: Inside the new book on Oklahoma City's parks

A new book is shining a spotlight on the heart of Oklahoma City: its parks. The Parks of Oklahoma City takes readers on a journey through more than a century of urban green space development, from the earliest days of frontier life to today’s award-winning park systems like Scissortail. Written by local authors Bob Blackburn and Brian Dougherty, the book captures the city’s transformation through public space, civic leadership, and community pride.

Read more: Oklahoma historian and horticulturist release book on OKC parks' history

Ahead of a signing event at Scissortail Park, News 9 sat down with the authors to talk about their discoveries, surprises from their research, and the future of Oklahoma City's parks.

Q: What's inside the book?

Blackburn: "Well, it's the story of parks and open spaces, and efforts to beautify our city since 1889. It got a slow start. It was a frontier boom town, but we had some leaders at the turn of the century, C.G. Gristmill Jones, I think, in the book we called him the godfather of the parks."

"He wanted Wheeler Park, got his father-in-law to donate the land as mayor, got the funding for it, worked with the legislature to get the ability to create a park trust, and really leaders like that since the beginning and then all the way to the very end with what's happened at the zoo and places that'll bring back a lot of shared memories."

Q: What kind of surprises did you uncover while writing the book?

Dougherty: "You know, I think all of us had realized the tremendous value of trees in the park, that supporting cast to the parks, and especially out here in a prairie in the great southern plains, where it was grass. And you turn around, and then you turn around. So we went back. and looked at what were those native trees that were actually there. Where were those council grove and the cross timbers and along the riparian zones of this two mile river valley."

"And it's ironic that where Bob's talking about Wheeler Park and being such the catalyst where everybody goes. And that's almost where Scissortail Park is today, 125 years later, and how that replicated different advocacy groups, but it's still about advocating for parks and public space."

Q: What do community leaders need to do to ensure the next 125 years are just as great as the past?

Blackburn: "Well, we've been fortunate, starting with Ron Norick in Maps 1, which is 1993, is that they had the river in Maps 1, and so people saw the results of that. When you combine that with the Bricktown Canal, with other beautification efforts, people say, 'yes, this is sustainable.' And so every MAPS project since has had money for parks, and we're getting ready to get another investment in parks with an endowment fund set up for taking care of it once it's built."

"So we've got this great system that started really, the big system started in 1909 with the corner parks that we now know as Lincoln and Woodson and Trosper, and Will Rogers. And then since then, we've expanded out to suburban parks."

"But I think most importantly to us, we've come back downtown, which connects all of us, east and west, north and south, bridging the river with that symbolic bridge going across, that's the pedestrian bridge. We have a system that is sustainable and serves everybody with neighborhood parks, regional parks, specialty parks, with nature, with zoos. The state fairgrounds itself is a city park, and it's on contract with the fair board to run it. But it is a city park that belongs to us, the people of Oklahoma City."

Q: Where is your book signing being held?

Dougherty: "We're going to do one at Scissortail Park at the stage at Scissortail Park, and it'll just be a signing, and Bob and I will talk some about the book, and so it will be this morning [at 9 a.m.]."