Prairie Song, Bartlesville, OK

Looking for an authentic western town? And you happen to be in NE Oklahoma? Look no further than Prairie Song, OK, 15 miles outside of Bartlesville. Actually it’s technically in Dewey, OK but I’d never heard of Dewey before this trip so in my head it belongs to Bartleville.

During Dear Sister-in-Law’s wedding weekend, while the rest of the gang was playing golf, BFF and I took Harry to visit Prairie Village. The brochure suggested you call ahead but we didn’t take heed until we were turning down a dirt road on to someone’s private cattle ranch. Turns out that cattle ranch also sports a western village. Who knew?!

Apparently the man who owns this village has been working on it and building it with his own two hands for the past 20 years (or something insane like that). He was very proud of the fact that he has built all of the buildings in an authentic to the era style. All of these buildings were chock-a-block full of stuff. Authentic, turn of the century stuff that he has collected for the past 20 years (or something crazy like that). He was extremely proud of all his stuff (as he should be) and had a story for everything and where he got it from the 100+ year old wood burning stoves (I counted no less than 6) to the jail cell to the surrey with fringe on top. Basically, this place was pretty amazing and crazy at the same time.

He had a building for everything. A general store, jail, post office, trading post, hardware store, saloon, doctor/dentist office, school house, church, cabin, printing press. There were more but I can’t remember all of them. The Little House theme song was playing in my head as we meandered this turn of the century town. Each building was full of stuff that was relevant to that building. I’m pretty sure this guy is an organized hoarder. Check it out.

Out of all the bazaar stuff we saw I thought this was the most interesting. This a picture of “Big Nose Kate”, Doc Holliday’s gal. Her license for prostitution is signed by Marshal Virgil Earp (Wyatt’s brother). What?! Where does someone get this stuff?! You can’t make this up! Who knows how much this is worth.

Here is our host. We found out the reason you need to call ahead for a tour is because this man is the tour guide and all the buildings are locked and only he has the key. Two hours (no joke) into our tour we were spent and had only seen a little more than half the buildings. We left early with the promise that next time we’re in Bartlesville we would return so we could see the rest of the village.