Bird Creek divides Pawhuska--not exactly into two even sections--but into north and south sections. The north section includes the schools, main hills, cemetery, downtown Pawhuska and most residences. The lower section is south of downtown and includes the section of town that we once unabashedly called "Colored Town." Some people used a more pejorative term. Along Bird Creek, but still on the north side of it are some industrial areas, such as the power and water plants and the defunct brick plant.
Bird Creek begins near Pearsonia and meanders southward across Osage County, entering Pawhuska on the northwest side west of Pawhuska Cemetery and the old brick plant. It effects a major crossing with Main Street, where the new bridge, built in 1958 [the old bridge was much older], offers four lanes to cross. Bird Creek continues under the bridge, southward until it intersects the low water bridge, then passes under the pedestrian swinging bridge and passes under Oklahoma Highway 99 where it divides Pawhuska between town and Lynn Addition.
I was fourteen years old when the new bridge along Main Street was under construction. What marks that year for me so clearly is that I had a 1958 motor scooter and I took my friend Cheri Maker on a ride to the edge of the new bridge, still under construction, and we walked out onto the still unfinished bridge.
The motor scooter was built by the Cushman company and sold by Sears and Roebuck with the model name of Jetsweep. Cushman sold their model as the Pacemaker. The scooter had one seat and a passenger shared it by sitting on the back half or she could move further back over the metal cover which was not comfortable. I picked Cheri up at her house and asked her if she wanted to ride and she said, "Sure" and hopped on. She was wearing a dress and I expected her to go in and put on jeans but she was comfortable and a bit daring so, she went--in the dress. I wore jeans.
The older bridge survives only in my memory as I took no photographs of it and a bridge is difficult to photograph. I remember that it was narrow, permitting two way traffic but in close quarters. I went to Ponca City on buses a few times and held my breath as we met a truck on the bridge. The bridge over Clear Creek, about a half mile further west, was worse. The bridge at Main Street was within walking distance from us and my mother and I had walked there a few times and watched people fish from the bridge, often with cane poles and a line and cork. Anytime I had looked over the sides, I became scared, mostly from the darkness of the water, so it wasn't my favorite activity.
Bird Creek was always labelled (with youthful glee)DIRTY Bird Creek! It's dirty-often-because it carries a lot of runoff in heavy rains and scours the banks. Bluestem lake dams South Bird Creek and Middle Bird Creek, while the mainstream North Bird Creek winds unmolested from the Tall Grass Preserve into Pawhuska,and the Power Plant.It leaves town along the alignment of Highway11,Nelagoney,Tallant,Barnsdall,Avant,Skiatook,Sperry,Turley,through the Tulsa Zoo,Owasso,east toward Catoosa,where it joins the Verdigris and forms the head of the Kerr-McClellan Navigation system. I remember Bird Creek flooding out various sections of the highway to Tulsa. I think I remember someone writing an article about a canoe or jon boat trip down Bird Creek, one I always dreamed of making. Want to go?
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