Chickasaw National Recreation Area
Chickasaw National Recreation Area is a national recreation area in the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains in south-central Oklahoma near Sulphur in Murray County. It includes the former Platt National Park and Arbuckle Recreation Area.
Part of the area was established as Sulphur Springs Reservation on July 1, 1902, and renamed and redesignated Platt National Park on June 29, 1906. At the time of its founding, the reservation, later national park, was located in Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation.
On March 17, 1976, Platt National Park was combined with the Arbuckle Recreation Area and additional lands and renamed. Of the park's, water covers. The park contains many fine examples of Civilian Conservation Corps rustic National Park Service-style architecture of the 1930s. CCC workers created pavilions, park buildings, and enclosures for the park's many natural springs.
The Chickasaw National Recreation Area preserves partially forested hills of south-central Oklahoma near Sulphur. Named to honor the Chickasaw Indian Nation, who were relocated to the area from the Southeastern United States during the 1830s, the park's springs, streams, and lakes provide opportunities for swimming, boating, fishing, picnicking, camping, and hiking, among other activities. As part of the Chickasaw tribe's arrangement with the U.S. government, the park does not charge an admission fee.
History
When the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes were forced to move from their former lands in the southeastern United States, they found an area within the new Chickasaw nation that contained a number of natural fresh and mineral springs that they believed had healing powers. Fearing that developers would turn the springs into a private resort, as had happened earlier at Hot Springs, Arkansas, the Chickasaw sold a 640-acre parcel to the U. S. Government, which named it the Sulphur Springs Reservation in 1902.The park was directly hit by the 2024 Sulphur tornado, which heavily damaged many areas of the park from the Lake of the Arbuckles into the Travertine District.
Platt National Park
In 1902, Orville H. Platt, a U.S. senator from the state of Connecticut, introduced legislation to establish the Sulphur Springs Reservation, protecting 32 freshwater and mineral springs in Murray County, Oklahoma. The reservation officially opened to the public April 29, 1904. On June 29, 1906, Congress re-designated the reservation as Platt National Park, named for the senator, a year after his death. It had the distinctions of being the seventh and smallest national park created in the United States as well as the only national park in Oklahoma, until its redesignation as a National Recreation Area in 1976. Since then, Gateway Arch National Park has taken its place as the smallest national park, at just.Visitors soon thronged to the new national park. Both the Sulphur Springs Railway and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway ("Santa Fe") had built spur lines to Sulphur, which became the main entrance to the park. According to the National Park Service, in 1914, Platt had more visitors than either Yellowstone or Yosemite.
In the 1930s, crews of the New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps developed the park's infrastructure, applying then-popular ideas of landscape design to create a tranquil and scenic oasis. The environment built during this time has remained well-preserved, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011.
Creation of CNRA
Platt National Park was abolished by Congress and made part of the much larger Chickasaw National Recreation Area in 1976, which included Lake of the Arbuckles.In 1983, the city of Sulphur traded the to the recreation area in exchange for a strip of land above the State Highway 7 bridge.
In 2011, the United States Mint issued a quarter featuring the Chickasaw's Lincoln Bridge, a limestone bridge built in 1909 to commemorate the 100th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, as part of its America the Beautiful Quarters series.