National Register Listing

Meers Mining Camp

a.k.a. Meers

20 mi. (32 km) NW of Lawton, Lawton, OK

"The grass is always greener..." There's more than a little of that philosophy behind the frenzied establishment of Meers Mining Camp. The area that experienced one of Oklahoma's best known gold rushes was "off limits" to whites until August 6, 1901, when the sprawling Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Indian lands were opened to settlement. But gold fever had been building up steadily over the years. From the time the Spanish first drifted into this section of southwestern Oklahoma in the early 1600s there had been rumors of "lost" gold mines and buried caches. In early 1892 silver was discovered in what was then Greer County, Texas, just west of the Indian lands. A mining town of Silverton sprang up near present Mangum. In the summer of 1895 there was a gold rush to the north, near Cloud Chief. A camp called Golden was established, this on the former Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation. And mining fever skyrocketed. But a key area was ta boo to the prospectors: the Wichita Mountains. Then in 1901 this last big section of Indian land was opened by lottery and prospectors swarmed over the area, concentrating on the northern and western slopes of the Wichitas.

More than 5,000 miners and prospectors came from all over the United States, Mining towns sprang up overnight ... Wildman, Oreana, Doris, Golden Pass, Canyon City, Meers, and others, Territorial mining newspapers sprang up with them ... the Mt. Sheridan Miner, the Otter Creek Miner, the Mineral Kingdom. And headlines like "The Wichita Mountains The Future Mineral District of America" ... "Gold Assays $360 Per Ton At Wildman" ... "$2,000 A Ton Strike at Mt. Park." The boom was pretty much self-fueling.

Digging started at the Gold Blossom mine near Meers in 1901. Evidence of a long abandoned Spanish arrastre undoubtedly stimulated interest in this particular area. The camp was named for Col, A. J. Meers, a Texas miner who had been in and around the mountains since 1886. Unfortunately, however, its original location was in a grove of cedars at the foot of Mount Sheridan, a couple of miles south of the site being nominated. And this was inside the boundary of the forest and wildlife preserve the government was establishing (the present Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Preserve).

The order to move was given and in 1902 miners and businessmen transferred their tents and shacks to the present location of Meers. The boom continued and by 1903 the camp, with a population of perhaps 3,000, boasted the regulation assortment of hotels, cafes, stores, blacksmith shops, saloons, and churches, On October 24, 1903, the Mt. Sheridan Miner in its first edition (a photostatic copy of which is among the artifacts displayed in Meers Store today) was "documenting" the validity of the gold rush. Some $50,000 worth of mining equipment had just been unloaded at Cache, the nearest railroad point, one story reported. "Charley Powell is sinking a shaft that is destined to prove very rich in gold," according to another. "That there are gold in silver in the mountains can no longer be doubted," claimed a third. Meers, as elsewhere, was self-fueling.

First announcement of the discovery of gold in the Wichitas, hailed as "the coming El Dorado of the world," came from a Dr. Hard in, identified as president of the Shawnee Milling Co., which reported finding gold and silver ore in one 72-foot shaft assayed at $1$75 a ton. "Few believed the (Hard in) story," said The Miner, "but, as the saying goes, truth will prevail," Listing "some rich strikes in the past few days," the old paper named such mines as the Winner and the Copper Queen, owned by J. C. Hollis; a discovery of platinum ore at the head of Cache Creek, and "valuable mines" like the Teddy, Little Bar, Mountain Gold, and Big Four.

But by 1907 it was over. All hopes for an El Dorado in the Wichitas had been dashed. Miners and prospectors were moving on to still greener fields ... or settling on the newly opened Indian lands around them and becoming farmers and ranchers. Meers itself was shrinking almost as fast as it had grown. And today only a one-time drugstore remains, a ramshackle, added-onto, false-fronted frame building that houses a combination country store/cafe/gas station/branch post office/community center, Broken concrete and wooden steps, only partially guarded by a bent pipe railing, lead up to the sagging front door. An all-glass telephone booth and a modern Coca-Cola box stand incongruously in front on a planked apron. Also in front -- in a wry gesture of defiance? -- is a parking meter. It strikes the reflective observer, provided his make-up is not totally lacking in whimsy, as altogether fitting.

Meers is a memorial -- small and admittedly modest, but boasting a certain picturesque charm -- to the Wichita Mountains "gold rush" of the early 1900s and the mystique of vast underground riches hanging over the entire region since the first Spaniards came this way from Mexico three centuries before.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1978.