There’s plenty to be discovered within Tulsa city limits. If you haven't been to Philbrook, the Greenwood Cultural Center or the Woody Guthrie Center, please go tomorrow. But if you venture out beyond the boundaries of Tulsa County, you’ll find a wider, sometimes literally woolier history. Piecing these narratives together creates a more complete and honest account of our region than you’ll find sticking close to home. Here are four museums off the beaten path, in Green Country and beyond.
Woolaroc Museum & Wildlife Preserve
You can’t tell the story of Woolaroc without the very phenomenon that helped make it (and nature preserves like it) necessary: the oil boom. A former fortress of Frank Phillips, founder of Phillips 66, the place known today as Woolaroc came to be in his custody in 1925, the same year Phillips Petroleum Company became the largest producer of natural gas in the U.S.
The rounded entrance to the museum is bright turquoise, adorned with mosaics of dancing Native Americans. Inside, the vast collection contains works that span millennia, starting with some of the oldest artifacts of our region: intricate shell carvings from Spiro, a replica of a throwing stick based on fragments found in the Kenton Caves near Black Mesa, Head Pots from the southeast Missouria and northeast Arkansas, and hundreds more.
Shining bronze Remingtons contrast with stacks of muted earthen pottery from Southwestern tribes, though both are intricate in their own right and tell their own stories of the region. Other collection stand-outs include a replica of an oil-industry lease from the 1930s and an enormous collection of Colt Firearms (a favorite of Frank Phillips’ nephew Phil, who donated more to Woolaroc than anyone other than Uncle Frank himself).