Photography: Chandler, OK

It was a lie. The lakes around Chandler were not really worth the time to go see. Both of them are fishing and boating lakes, but you had best not get caught so much as wading in the water. That adds all kinds of expensive water processing to make it drinkable. This first shot is looking across Chandler Lake; the far shore is lovely. However, the water is a murky green and the fixtures for the boat dock were crumbling.

Bellcow Lake is slightly nicer. I took this shot (left) from an artificial causeway. It was an unusual still day and at midmorning nothing was biting. There were fees for just about everything except parking and taking pictures. The water was a little nicer in this lake, still green but not so murky. There are mansions visible from the lake up near the dam, and the scenery is generally more picturesque (right).

So I consoled myself with taking a few shots around the town of Chandler. It has the distinction of being one of earliest sites settled after the Land Run and has kept a lot of truly old structures intact. Roughly 20 items are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I’ve only picked a few that were easily found, like the old high school (image left). It has a slightly more modern addition on the backside, but the whole thing was abandoned for a new site that was much larger down in the valley on the west side of town. This old stairway runs up from that valley floor, which once was a very busy place.

The bottom of the stairs is quite near a very large area previously used for the annual National Guard camp. This tiny building perched on the hillside was their statistical office, built sometime around 1909.

The city decided to restore as much as possible the old Highway 66 Phillips 66 gas station (right) out near the north end of the main drag. This next shot (left) is just one section of downtown and captures their museum and the old Chandler Bookstore, among other things. A lot of the historic buildings are right on the main street through downtown. The historic homes are typically just a few blocks west of this street.

Outside of Chandler on Route 66 to the west in Warwick is the Motorcycle Museum. At this point it was getting too hot to stop anywhere for very long. It didn’t appear to be open anyway. But on my way back I did manage this time to capture the historic Captain Creek Bridge just west outside of Wellston on US 66B.

This turned out to be a decent trip despite my disappointment with the lakes.