WALNUT CREEK STATE PARK

            Situation: Walnut Creek State Park is on Keystone Lake, a water project west of Tulsa that saw the impoundment of the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers.  Collectors have found lots of artifacts on the shores of Keystone Lake, but particularly on a campground known as Sailboat Beach.  Here Oklahoma Anthropological Society (OAS) member, Bill Johnson, recovered several Calf Creek and Cossatot River points affiliated with the Calf Creek culture, which existed about 5000-6000 years ago.  As with Clovis points, these objects are uniquely shaped and therefore diagnostic – a quality quite rare for eastern Oklahoma.  Recently, a recognizable Calf Creek point was found in the Arkansas River at Sand Springs, just west of Tulsa, embedded in the skull of an ancient bison (see Lee Bement et al., Plains Anthropologist, 2005).  That was some reward for Kim, the river-wanderer who found it.

            Bill Johnson’s finds were made known to Don Wyckoff, Curator at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Norman.  Don interested me in the project and took me out to the spot at Sailboat Beach where Bill had found the points.  I agreed to test the locale, which was accomplished in the summer of 2005 with the help and cooperation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

            The first day out there, we established a datum and grid and started digging in the sands, but to no avail.  After that, Paul Roberts of the Corps procured for us a back hoe and driver (Ernie); subsequently, the only digging done by hand was in cleaning off profile walls.  Ernie dug four large holes for us on either end of the embankment locale we were interested in, as well as a long trench up above them.  One could not say that our efforts were particularly successful, as we never found a promising site, but at least we can say where the site isn’t. 

            We also tested a second prospective prehistoric occupation in the park, at a place called Brushy Campground.  Collectors had reportedly discovered Paleoindian artifacts in this locale.  However, as much as our crew and friends walked the beach, they never came up with so much as a flake.  We had Ernie dig two lengthy back hoe trenches on the upslope and downslope sides of the area, but we didn’t find anything there, either.

            Future Prospects: Pretty grim.  No work is planned for this area in the immediate future – at least, not by me.

            Publications: I have recently prepared an article on this project, “Walnut Creek Archaeology – or, Why Doesn’t the OAS Just Go Dig?” for Oklahoma Archeology.  It will probably be published in late 2007 or early 2008.