The Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch
is a reminder of frontier days:
cowboys, cattle, roping and animals.
Jim Williams is the ranch manager. He wears spurs while riding his favoite horse Smokey, uses his lasso to catch calves, and can twirl a fancy loop just like Will Rogers.
Often, while practicing his trick roping, Jim Williams asks visiting youngsters to jump into the spinning loop. Sometimes that trick is called "the wedding ring."
Inside the old barn on the Will Rogers ranch is a "surrey with the fringe on top." It was used as a prop in the Broadway musical, Oklahoma!
Dozens of Texas Longhorn cattle graze on the pastures of the Will Rogers' ranch, which Will called "The Dog Iron." His brand also was called "The Dog Iron." It is shaped like the ends to metal racks used in fireplaces to hold the wood. He used his branding iron--the Dog Iron--to brand young calves that were called "doggies." The word Dog Iron has several connotations.
In 1870 Will Rogers' father, Clem Rogers, began building the two-story, log-walled house where Will Rogers was born nine years later. Clem selected a building site on a hillside overlooking the Verdigris River. He used hardwood trees that were hand-hewed with axes and started with one room. When he could, he added a second room, and finally two rooms upstairs. As an add-on, he built a "lean-to," that became the kitchen, dining room and a spare bedroom. When the house finally was complete, he imported clapboard siding to cover the logs…and painted the house white.
As a judge in the Cherokee Nation, Clem Rogers held court in the parlor of the frontier home. Later, when he was elected to the Cherokee Nation's Senate, he met with constituents in the house's parlor as a place to discuss the tribal government. At night, the rug would be rolled back for a dance, and folks came from miles around to join the fun. The grand old house became known as "The White House on the Verdigris."
Will Rogers was born in the east room downstairs. He said Abraham Lincoln. Of course, by the time of Will Rogers' birth, President Lincoln had been dead for fourteen years.
Will Rogers was born November 4, 1879, election day! Although his elder brother died while Will was very young, he otherwise had a happy childhood in the house on the sprawling frontier ranch until his mother's death when Will was ten years old. He then was sent to various boarding schools but would come back to the ranch during the summer. Throughout his life, Will Rogers would return to the place of his birth and dream of returning to the Oklahoma hills where he was born.
From the nineteenth century into the twenty-first, the Dog Iron Ranch and the ancient log-walled house have been symbols of America's greatness and of its frontier heritage. The house is kept open all day long every day for visitors to share the history.
Touring the house, roaming the land around the ranch, viewing or petting the farm animals and visiting the old barn is a chance to feel history: Will Rogers' heritage, frontier expansion and settlement and a reminder of a time when today's Oklahoma was yesteryear's Indian Territory, a land of cowboys and Indians, a place of formation and character. It is pulsating, real-life 1879 history with the sights, sounds and feel of the foundations of American culture and the roots of Will Rogers' own rare contributions.
"No American child should grow up without knowing about Will Rogers," says Jim Williams. "By visiting the Dog Iron Ranch, people of all ages get the feel of the fundamentals that created this great man.
"All the things that were Will Rogers started right here."
