Lawton Public Library celebrating local history with Talking Trail

Lawton has a rich, colorful history, and Lawton Public Library wants to help locals and visitors fully appreciate it.

The library is working with the digital site Talking Trails to designate 30 locations within the city that will receive Talking Trail historical interactive markers. Each marker comes with a QR code to link visitors to a digital “talking point” that will give the history and importance of the designated site. The result is a better appreciation for the community’s history and culture, said Amber Follett, genealogical librarian for Lawton Public Library.

The goal is to have the first markers in place by Fall, and library staff and Talking Trail is quickly moving that direction. The scripts have been written for the first 10 marker sites, another 12 sites are in progress, and Follett is negotiating with local entities on several other sites.

Lawton Public Library received a grant from the Oklahoma Historical Society to cover the cost of those first 30 markers. But Library Director Kristin Herr and her staff are betting sponsors in the community will help pay for more signs, meaning the Talking Trail project can be expanded beyond those initial markers.

Just call it a labor of love for a librarian who already is invested in Lawton and area history by virtue of her work as the person who oversees the library’s genealogy area.

It was Follett who crafted the initial list of buildings and sites that people in the community voted on in a survey designed to select the first markers. Some are actual buildings (the Mattie Beal Home, Douglass School, Central Fire Station), while others are sites where something happened or where buildings used to be (the lottery auction site that created Lawton, the Red Store). Two are monuments to celebrate people important to local history: Maj. Gen. Henry Ware Lawton and the Army’s Buffalo Soldiers.

They share a common thread: they are aspects of the community’s diversity.

The Red Store was an early-day trading post initially located on what is now Rogers Lane, near Interstate 44. The store was moved twice, Follett said, so the question may become where best to locate the marker (one site no longer is possible because it is in the middle of a privately-owned field)

The Buffalo Soldiers Monument on West Gore Boulevard celebrates African American soldiers who helped settle the West, to include building the original Fort Sill. The Mattie Beal Home was built by the second person to draw a site in Lawton’s lottery, a young telephone operator who traveled to Lawton to try her hand at winning a homestead and, once a winner, became a driving force in the community with her husband, Charles Payne.

“Each site is unique,” Follett said, of the story each marker tells.

Follett said the beauty of the project is that visitors don’t even have to stand in front of the markers to take the tour. The QR code will be available via the Talking Trail website, meaning people can digitally explore the history by clicking on the website.

“You don’t even have to be in Lawton,” Follett said.

Herr said the Talking Trail project complements what Lawton Public Library already has done and continues to do to preserve the city’s history, to include a digital access project that is putting various documents, newspapers and books into digital format.

“It’s making people curious about this community,” Herr said. “It’s interesting, and a modern way to engage people in history.”