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RonTheTurtleman — Route 66 Afton Oklahoma

#66 #afton #highway #route #oklahoma
Published: 2016-11-02 04:56:37 +0000 UTC; Views: 398; Favourites: 3; Downloads: 1
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Description Buffalo Ranch (or it's replacement) just west of Afton Oklahoma on old Route 66, October 2016.


There is an Internet article written by Steve Lackmeyer  newsok.com/article/3068321  that was published June 20th 2007.  I was trying to mine it for information, but I think it would be more informative if I just quoted relevant parts of the article here.  

"Afton has a long history of luring tourists from the highway, especially when it was still commissioned as Route 66. Old, faded motel signs hint at the town's former vibrancy.

For decades, the town was home to the Buffalo Ranch, which hosted Indian dances and offered visitors a chance to see an impressive menagerie of animals. The adjoining Dairy Ranch, owned by Betty Wheatley, served up snow cones and burgers for more than 42 years.

"When I was a little girl, my mom would take me to the Buffalo Ranch, and Betty was always there, she always had the same white apron on,” said Susan Boyd, who with her mother once worked at the Dairy Ranch. "It was 24/7.”

"We would get the snow cones. Then when I got married, I took my kids there, and Betty had the best lemon slushes you've ever seen. Her cheeseburgers were awesome, her fries were awesome.”

Wheatley said she and her husband, Jim, bought the Dairy Ranch in 1958, a few years after the opening of the Buffalo Ranch.

At the Buffalo Ranch, visitors shopped at what was billed as the world's largest western wear store, browsed the displays of American Indian jewelry and trinkets at the Trading Post, ate at the Dairy Ranch or an adjoining barbecue restaurant.

Animals on display included deer, elk, steers, peacocks, ducks, "a lot of buffalo” — and even one buffalo trained to do tricks. "I would get in at eight in the morning, and we stayed busy, and turned the lights out at 10 at night,” Wheatley said.

Lifelong resident Tom Bassett recalls competing with other kids for a chance to make money placing Buffalo Ranch stickers on tourists' car bumpers when the attraction first opened in 1953. "You'd be surprised how hard they tried to chase the kids away,” said Bassett, owner of the town's grocery.

"Everybody wanted that job — putting those stickers on bumpers, a nickel a shot.”

Wheatley and Bassett have different memories of the day Will Rogers Turnpike opened as a bypass of Route 66. Wheatley recalls business dropped for a couple of years at the Buffalo Ranch, but then thrived through the 1990s. 

The loss of the Buffalo Ranch hit in 1995 with the death of owner Aleene Kay. The building's contents were auctioned off, and the property sat empty while Wheatley continued to serve burgers at the Dairy Ranch. Her restaurant closed in 2001 due to her husband's declining health, and the entire property was razed soon after by new owners who replaced it with a new Buffalo Ranch. The property still hosts a few buffalo in an adjoining field, but otherwise the business resembles a modern truck stop.

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