Oklahoma
The man behind Route 66’s Totem Pole Park: The history of a 90-foot Oklahoma landmark
Just miles off Route 66 in Rogers County stands one of Oklahoma’s most unusual roadside attractions: a 90-foot concrete totem pole built largely by one man over more than a decade.
Ed Galloway’s Totem Pole Park is home to what is widely described as the world’s largest concrete totem pole, created by Oklahoma folk artist Nathan Edward Galloway during his retirement years.
The park sits near Chelsea and continues to draw visitors traveling Oklahoma’s stretch of Route 66.
A project decades in the making
Credit: Rogers County Historical Society
According to the National Park Service, Nathan Edward Galloway was born in 1880 in Springfield, Missouri. He later worked as a manual arts teacher at Sand Springs Home before retiring in 1937 to property near present-day Chelsea in Rogers County.
After retiring, Galloway began building what would become Totem Pole Park. Using concrete, steel rebar, wood, and red sandstone, he created a series of colorful, highly decorated totems and structures across the property.
Atlas Obscura reports that Galloway began construction in 1938 with the goal of building durable totem poles from sturdy materials, and he surrounded his land with tapered concrete monuments and decorative features.
Between 1937 and 1948, Galloway constructed the park’s centerpiece: a 90-foot-tall totem pole carved with bas-relief designs. Travel Oklahoma describes it as a Route 66 icon and a state landmark.
Eleven years and 90 feet of concrete
Credit: Rogers County Historical Society
The main totem took roughly 11 years to complete, according to Atlas Obscura. The structure is made of red sandstone framed with steel and wood, then covered with a thick concrete exterior.
The tower features more than 200 carved images, including representations of birds and Native American figures facing the four cardinal directions. Near the top are four nine-foot figures representing different tribes.
Galloway’s version differs from traditional totem poles of the Pacific Northwest, which are generally carved from red cedar.
The structure rises from the back of a large, three-dimensional turtle. The turtle base was carved from a broad sandstone outcrop on the site and painted in bright colors.
The totem is hollow and rises about nine stories, with the ground level measuring about nine feet in diameter. Inside, plastered walls feature painted murals of mountain-and-lake scenes and bird totems, along with Native American shields and arrow points. At the top, the cone is open to the sky.
Picnic tables supported by small concrete totems, a totem barbecue fireplace, and gate structures designed to resemble fish fill the park grounds.
The Fiddle House
Credit: Rogers County Historical Society
Beyond the towering pole, Galloway’s artistic interests extended into music and woodworking.
An 11-sided structure known as the “Fiddle House” sits on the property and resembles a Navajo hogan, according to the National Park Service. The building houses many of Galloway’s hand-carved fiddles and other creations.
The Rogers County Historical Society says the Fiddle House Museum retains many of Galloway’s handcrafted violins and artifacts.
From neglect to restoration
Credit: Rogers County Historical Society
Galloway continued working on the park until his death in 1961. After he died, the site gradually fell into disrepair.
In 1989, the Rogers County Historical Society acquired the property. A major restoration effort took place from 1988 to 1998, with art conservators and engineers studying the structures and repairing damaged materials.
Additional repainting and preservation projects began in 2015.
Today, Totem Pole Park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It remains open year-round with free admission and is managed by the Rogers County Historical Society.
Brent Venables got Oklahoma back to the College Football Playoff in 2025, and while the season was a massive success, merely making the 12-team field isn’t good enough for anyone in Norman — Venables included.
The Sooners enter 2026 with something that has been missing on both sides of the ball for a few years: continuity.
OU returns its starting quarterback, John Mateer, for the first time since Dillon Gabriel started Venables’ first two seasons as head coach.
Offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle is back, and while Venables lost cornerbacks coach Jay Valai to the Buffalo Bills, Venables has everyone else back on his staff and he’s the architect of the defense.
The schedule will be tough again, but expectations are high for Venables’ fifth team at Oklahoma.
Here are three areas the Sooners need to improve to get back in the national championship picture.
Run the Ball
Venables hasn’t shied away from OU’s issues running the football.
He’s put improvement in the rushing attack at the forefront all throughout the offseason, from working to sharpen the mentality of the offense to bringing in pieces like right tackle E’Marion Harris and a virtually new tight end room to help the cause.
More consistency on the ground will take pressure off Mateer’s shoulders.
It will not only allow OU to control the clock and give its defense a rest, but it will also open up the passing game downfield if the second and third levels of opposing defenses truly have to worry about bottling up the run and the pass.
The inability to run the ball was the Sooners’ most glaring issue in 2025, so there is plenty of room for improvement this fall.
Limit Mateer’s Turnovers
At times, Mateer had to do everything for OU’s offense in 2025.
There were memorable moments, but Mateer also had a handful of head-scratching mistakes.
He threw a career-high 11 interceptions a year ago, and his downturn in turnovers in November coincided with the Sooners’ employing conservative game plans.
His worst moment came in the loss to Texas, where he threw three picks, but that performance came 17 days after thumb surgery, where he clearly was unable to throw the ball downfield with real accuracy.
But he threw a pick in each of his first three games on questionable decisions, then he threw a nearly catastrophic pick against Tennessee when the Sooners were just trying to milk the clock late.
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He tossed another three picks against LSU, and the pick six he threw against Alabama helped the Crimson Tide roar all the way back after digging a 17-point hole in the College Football Playoff.
Mateer’s freewheeling nature produced incredible moments, and that will lead to risky throws. The tradeoff in those moments is usually worth it, but he can cut down on his misfires elsewhere to find a balance between pushing the envelope and taking care of the football.
Avoid the Back-breaking Special Teams Plays
Oklahoma was excellent on special teams in 2025 for the most part.
Kicker Tate Sandell won the program’s first Lou Groza Award for his incredible season, and special teams played a big role in massive victories, like Isaiah Sategna’s first punt return in Tuscaloosa that set OU’s offense up deep in Alabama territory.
But the few special teams lapses were monumental.
Texas effectively put away the Red River Showdown by returning a punt for a touchdown, though Venables correctly pointed out a key block in the back that wasn’t called that helped spring the touchdown.
But in the Cotton Bowl, the call stood, and it’s the kind of play that cannot happen when lining up against the best competition on the schedule.
Then, in the CFP, punter Grayson Miller oddly dropped the football, leading to a blocked punt. Alabama was able to take that play and start clawing its way back into the contest.
Doug Deakin has done a phenomenal job with the Sooners’ special teams units, but there are still improvements to be made in 2026.
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Oklahoma
Wembanyama leads San Antonio Spurs past Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 to reach NBA Finals
Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs started the Western Conference finals with a win in Oklahoma City, then ended the series the same way.
The champions are dethroned. Wembanyama and the Spurs are headed to the NBA Finals.
Wembanyama scored 22 points, Julian Champagnie got 18 of his 20 off of 3-pointers, and the Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 111-103 on Saturday night – bucking heavy odds to win a Game 7 on the road.
“This feeling, I can’t explain it,” Wembanyama said. “It’s so powerful.”
Stephon Castle scored 16 points, and De’Aaron Fox had 15. Dylan Harper added 12, and Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell each finished with 11 for the Spurs, who are headed to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2014.
They will host the New York Knicks in Game 1 on Wednesday night.
“Back in October, we knew we had a chance to be pretty good,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.
Correction – the Spurs have a chance to be great. Championship-level great.
A huge moment came midway through the fourth, when San Antonio’s Luke Kornet blocked Oklahoma City’s Isaiah Hartenstein at the rim – denying a fast-break score that would have gotten the Thunder within four.
It felt like the last gasp for the Thunder. Kornet played six minutes, missed all three of his shot attempts, and finished with only two points, but the block was an epic moment.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 35 points and nine assists, but for the eighth consecutive season, the NBA will have a new champion. Cason Wallace scored 17 points, while Jared McCain and Alex Caruso had 12 apiece for the Thunder.
“You have to grow from every experience, including the tough ones,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “And it’s the NBA – there are tough ones. We can also be really disappointed. … There’s nobody that we don’t think we can beat, respectfully.”
After four straight games that were largely decided going into the fourth quarter — the Thunder led Game 3 by 11, the Spurs led Game 4 by 18, the Thunder led Game 5 by 10, and the Spurs led Game 6 by 26, those leads all holding up with relative ease – this one was different, worthy of a Game 7.
Spurs 80, Thunder 77 was the score going into the fourth, a bit of a back-and-forth contest in which the Spurs led by as many as 14 in the first half and by as many as 11 in the third, only to see the Thunder come roaring back both times.
“The players did what they’ve been doing all year, and they met the biggest moment,” Johnson said.
The Spurs pulled away in the fourth again, daring the Thunder to try to come back one more time. The champions — short-handed, with Jalen Williams sidelined with a bad hamstring — just didn’t have anything left.
“Winning an NBA championship is very hard in itself to do one time,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “So to do it all over again would just only make it harder.”
San Antonio won eight of the 12 meetings against the Thunder this season — and in the end, the only matchup that really mattered.
“We want four more,” Wembanyama said. “We’re not done.”
SAN ANTONIO – Eight very lucky Spurs superfans are on their way to Oklahoma City, all thanks to H-E-B!
Early Saturday morning, the Spurs Jackals, a team of superfans of the San Antonio Spurs, personally curated by Victor Wembanyama ahead of the 2025-2026 season, announced via X (formerly Twitter) that eight of their members would be going to Oklahoma City.
This came following a previous announcement from the previous day, sadly telling fans they would not be in attendance at Game 7.
Following that, H-E-B confirmed the announcement, saying that the eight lucky superfans would be joining the organization for Game 7 in Oklahoma City.
RELATED | Meet the Jackals: San Antonio’s new era of Spurs energy
Whether you’ve been to a San Antonio Spurs game in person or caught them taking over your social media feed, you’ve heard them before.
During home games, the fans inside The Frost Bank Center serve as a heartbeat, and The Jackals are the pulse.
Founded ahead of the 2025-2026 season by Victor Wembanyama, the group got the ultimate co-sign from Wemby himself when he gave them their now-iconic name, The Jackals.
No matter if you’re up in the 200 section or courtside cheering for the Spurs. The jackals are in section 114 and in the H-E-B fan zone, carrying the energy across all levels of Frost Bank Arena.
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