Quanah Parker Lake | |
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![]() Quanah Parker Lake Dam, Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge Courtesy MARELBLU September 23, 2012 | |
Location | Comanche County, Oklahoma |
Coordinates | 34°42′51″N98°38′27″W / 34.7143°N 98.6407°W |
Type | Reservoir |
Primary inflows | Quanah Creek |
Basin countries | United States |
Surface area | 89 acres (36 ha) |
Water volume | 905 acre⋅ft (1,116,000 m3) |
Shore length1 | 3 miles (4.8 km) |
Surface elevation | 1,482 ft (452 m) |
1 Shore length is not a well-defined measure. |
Quanah Parker Lake is a reservoir located in Comanche County, Oklahoma, and is part of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. It was built on Quanah Creek during the 1930s as a Federal Work Project during the Great Depression, and is named for the last chief of the Quahadi Comanche tribe. [1] It is 14.3 miles (23.0 km) from Lawton, Oklahoma. [2]
The lake has a surface of 89 acres (36 ha) and 3 miles (4.8 km) of shoreline. [1] Its normal elevation is 1,482 feet (452 m) and capacity is reportedly 905 acre-feet (1,116,000 m3). [3]
The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ is a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Ellis County is a county located on the western border of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,749, making it the fifth-least populous county in Oklahoma. Its county seat is Arnett.
Cache is a city in Comanche County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 2,796 at the 2010 census. It is an exurb included in the Lawton, Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the location of Star House, the home of the Comanche chief Quanah Parker, the major leader of the Quahadi Comanche in the years of Indian Wars and transition to reservation life.
Waurika is the county seat of Jefferson County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,837 as of the 2020 United States census.
Comanche is a city in Stephens County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,378 at the time of the 2020 Census.
Quanah is a city in and the county seat of Hardeman County, Texas, United States. As of the 2020 census the population was 2,279, down from 2,641 at the 2010 census.
The Fort Parker massacre, also known as the Fort Parker raid, was an event in which a group of Texian colonists were killed in an attack by a contingent of Comanche, Kiowa, Caddo, and Wichita raiders at Fort Parker on May 19, 1836. During the attack, Cynthia Ann Parker, then approximately nine years old, was captured and spent most of the rest of her life within the Comanche Nation, later marrying Chief Peta Nocona and giving birth to three children, including a son, Quanah Parker, who became a prominent leader of the Comanches and a war leader during the Red River War of 1874–75. Cynthia’s brother John Richard Parker was also captured and remained with the Comanches for six years before his release was negotiated. He was unable to readapt to Western society and chose to return to the Comanche Nation.
Quanah Parker was a war leader of the Kwahadi ("Antelope") band of the Comanche Nation. He was likely born into the Nokoni ("Wanderers") band of Tabby-nocca and grew up among the Kwahadis, the son of Kwahadi Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo-American who had been abducted as an eight-year-old child during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836 and assimilated into the Nokoni tribe. Following the apprehension of several Kiowa chiefs in 1871, Quanah Parker emerged as a dominant figure in the Red River War, clashing repeatedly with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. With European-Americans hunting American bison, the Comanches' primary sustenance, into near extinction, Quanah Parker eventually surrendered and peaceably led the Kwahadi to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Cynthia Ann Parker, Naduah, Narua, or Preloch, was a woman who was captured, aged around nine, by a Comanche band during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836, where several of her relatives were killed. She was taken with several of her family members, including her younger brother John Richard Parker. Parker was later adopted into the tribe and had three children with a chief. Twenty-four years later she was relocated and taken captive by Texas Rangers, aged approximately 33, and unwillingly forced to separate from her sons and conform to European-American society. Her Comanche name means "was found" or "someone found."
The Comanche Wars were a series of armed conflicts fought between Comanche peoples and Spanish, Mexican, and American militaries and civilians in the United States and Mexico from as early as 1706 until at least the mid-1870s. The Comanche were the Native American inhabitants of a large area known as Comancheria, which stretched across much of the southern Great Plains from Colorado and Kansas in the north through Oklahoma, Texas, and eastern New Mexico and into the Mexican state of Chihuahua in the south. For more than 150 years, the Comanche were the dominant native tribe in the region, known as “the Lords of the Southern Plains”, though they also shared parts of Comancheria with the Wichita, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache and, after 1840, the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, located in southwestern Oklahoma near Lawton, has protected unique wildlife habitats since 1901 and is the oldest managed wildlife facility in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service system. The refuge's location in the geologically unique Wichita Mountains and its areas of undisturbed mixed grass prairie make it an important conservation area. The Wichita Mountains are approximately 500 million years old. Measuring about 59,020 acres (238.8 km2), the refuge hosts a great diversity of species: 806 plant species, 240 species of birds, 36 fish, and 64 reptiles and amphibians are present.
State Highway 49 (SH-49) is a 30-mile-long (48 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It runs from SH-54 in Kiowa County to Interstate 44 (I-44) near Lawton. Part of the highway runs through the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge; this portion of SH-49 carries no signage identifying it as such. It has no lettered spur routes.
The Quartz Mountains are an extension of the Wichita Mountains in the far southwestern part of the state of Oklahoma. According to the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, the range was originally formed about 550 million years ago as a "failed continental rift". It was uplifted about 300 million years ago and has since weathered into its current condition. The unique geography provides cover for the most northerly natural population of the Texas live oak, quercus fusiformis. This rare oak is generally regarded as the most cold hardy evergreen oak.
The Battle of Pease River, also known as the Pease River Massacre or the Pease River fight, occurred on December 19, 1860, near present-day Margaret, Texas in Foard County, Texas, United States. The town is located between Crowell and Vernon within sight of the Medicine Mounds just outside present-day Quanah, Texas.
Isatai'i, also known as Isatai, or Eschiti was a Comanche warrior and medicine man of the Kwaharʉ band. Originally named Quenatosavit, after the debacle at Adobe Walls on June 27, 1874, he was renamed Isatai'i. Isatai'i gained enormous prominence for a brief period in 1873-74 as a prophet and "messiah" of Native Americans. He succeeded, albeit temporarily, in uniting the autonomous Comanche bands as no previous Chief or leader had ever done. Indeed, his prestige was such that he was able to organize what was said to be the first Comanche sun dance, a ritual that his tribe had not previously adopted.
Double Mountains is the name of a pair of flat-topped buttes located 13 miles (21 km) southwest of Aspermont in Stonewall County, Texas. While the Handbook of Texas gives their elevation as either 2,000 ft (610 m) or 2,400 ft (732 m), United States Geological Survey maps give the elevation of the western mountain as 2,523 ft (769 m) and that of the eastern mountain as between 2,580 and 2,600 ft. Together, the mountains form part of the high ground dividing the watersheds of the Salt Fork and Double Mountain Fork Brazos River.
The Quanah Parker Star House, with stars painted on its roof, is located in the city of Cache, county of Comanche, in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It was added in 1970 to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Comanche County, Oklahoma.
Navajoe is a ghost town in Jackson County, Oklahoma, United States, located eight miles east and four miles north of Altus at the base of the Navajo Mountains.
Clear Creek Lake is a reservoir located in Stephens County, Oklahoma, approximately 13 miles (21 km) northeast of Duncan, Oklahoma. It was built in 1948 with an earthen dam. It is one of four lakes that are collectively known as the "Duncan Area Lakes."
Ketch Ranch House or Ketch Ranch was private property located in the Wichita Mountains of Southwestern Oklahoma. During the early 1920s, the forest reserve residence was established as a working ranch and vacation home for Ada May Ketch and Frank Levant Ketch who served as mayor of Ringling, Oklahoma.