Located along the Bricktown Canal River Walk, the monument includes bronze sculptures of 24 horses and riders, two covered wagons, a buckboard, a sulky, dogs, and even a startled rabbit.&nbsp; All the statues are quite lifelike and they stretch for 365 feet along the river walk, making the entire monument one of the largest free-standing bronze sculptures on the globe.

A bronze soldier, standing off to the side, is depicted firing the canon which set the frontiersmen on their journey to stake their claim on a plot of land back in 1889.&nbsp; Other statues include a bronze rider reaching back for his hat, a pair of horses, pulling a buckboard, rearing up in fear just before entering the water, and a dog struggling to leap from the back of a covered wagon to join the race.&nbsp;

The monument was designed and created by native Oklahoman artist, Paul Moore, and is accessible 24 hours a day. However, daylight visits are highly recommended.

Statue of dog struggling to join the race.

Primary Source: Harper's Weekly article from 1889 titled "The Rush to Oklahoma"

More Info

State government site with a description and short video of the monument.

Website

Tripadvisor for the monument with reviews.

"Run Oklahoma Run: From Discovery to Statehood," by Jack White

Book

The Centennial Land Run Monument commemorates the transfer of land that had been promised to Native American tribes to the federal government, and the subsequent decision by the government to open those lands to white settlers. The first of three land rushes occurred in 1889 when Indian Territory became Oklahoma Territory and would-be settlers were invited to stake their claims simply by being the first to reach and thereby"claim" a section of land. The monument consists of 45 larger-than-life bronze statues, depicting the settlers in various action poses, frozen in time.  The first statue was placed in 2003 and the final one in 2015.

Centennial Land Run Monument

Driving or heritage tour of pioneer-themed monuments in Oklahoma.

Pioneer Monuments in Oklahoma

Settler-themed public monuments stretching from Texas to Minnesota along I-35

Pioneer Monuments on Interstate 35 Travel Corridor

This monument commemorates the Broken Arrow city centennial in 2002. Tulsa, Oklahoma, native J. David Nunneley's design was selected from among 13 finalists because it captured many aspects of Broken Arrow's history and culture. The rooster in the boy's arms and the basket of peaches capture aspects of the local agricultural industry.Like other postwar pioneer family monuments, this statue features a young boy standing in front of his parents, prepared to lead them into the future. The Centennial Commemorative Statue Committee selected the piece because it “combined all the things that have made Broken Arrow a booming community—family, tradition, farming, heritage and hard work,” and even included a nod to the area’s Native American heritage.[1] But wedding a meek Indian maiden to a strong white farmer gives an illusion of equality, while actually depicting the white takeover of Native lands and cultures. The large book that the Native woman carries suggests her embrace of the twin blessings of Euro-American education and Christianity carried West by white pioneer women. Yet her knee-length fringed buckskin dress and moccasins and the two braids hanging down below her shoulders mark the limits of her assimilation. In contrast, her husband’s cowboy boots and hat demonstrate his hardy white masculinity. Rather than embracing one another in marital unity, they stand apart, their arms crossing behind the boy as each separately guides their young son forward.The statue's portrayal of the union of a white farmer and Native woman echoes a 1977 monument in front of the Oklahoma Territorial Museum in Guthrie. Statehood celebrates the marriage of Indian Territory and white settlers to create the state of Oklahoma.

2002 Broken Arrow city centennial monument portraying local history and culture. It emphasizes the mixing of Native American and white cultures and local agricultural industry. The portrayal of a husband, wife, and their young son echoes other postwar pioneer family monuments.

Pioneer Family and Rooster

One of several works of public art located along the Legacy Trail, this statue depicts a seated frontier teacher dressed in a prairie-style gown gazing at a large book on her lap. A young girl reads with her, pointing to the book while gazing up at the teacher's face. A barefooted boy sits cross-legged on her other side, writing on a slate in his lap with a piece of chalk in his proper right hand. A wagon wheel stands behind them. The monument was dedicated July 3, 1999 "to the pioneers and educators of the State of Oklahoma."Dozens of monuments to pioneer women honor their role as educators preparing the next generation and carrying white American culture to the frontier. A similar scene of a woman reading with a young girl appears in marble bas relief in the Oregon State Library in Salem, Oregon. The better-known Pioneer Woman monument in Ponca City, Oklahoma, features a young mother walking westward, carrying a Bible with which to educate her young son and the peoples of the West.

Monument depicting a frontier schoolteacher accompanied by her students. It was dedicated "to the pioneers and educators of the State of Oklahoma" in 1999. Public monuments to pioneer women often honor them as teachers or informal educators of their own children.

Pioneer Classroom

This monument honoring Oklahoma settlers was dedicated on "89ers Day" in 1960. It was sculpted by Oklahoma City artist Leonard McMurry and donated by B. D. and Pauline Eddie. According to its dedicatory plaque, this statue of a man using a hatchet to drive a stake into the ground while his young son sits atop their horse commemorated the "strong men and women" who settled in the 1889 Land Run.The statue's focus on depicting a land run makes it typical of other, more recent Oklahoma monuments, and sets it apart from pioneer monuments erected across the United States from the 1880s to the present. Most pioneer monuments elsewhere in the US focus on women carrying American culture westward or families' persistence after they settled in the West. [1]"Land Runs" are a historical phenomenon closely associated with Oklahoma. When American settlers moved westward in the mid-19th century, Oklahoma was designated as "Indian Territory"--land set aside for Native Americans. Native groups pushed out of the eastern United States were relocated onto the homelands of Indigenous peoples within that Indian Territory.The 1889 Land Run focused on territory that previously had been set aside for Indian reservations. Lands held by Indigenous groups as well as emigrant tribes would be opened to white settlement in future land runs.In 1889, US President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed the nearly 2-million-acre "Unassigned Lands" open for settlement. The so-called Springer Amendment allowed settlement under the terms of the 1862 Homestead Act and denied earlier settlers traditional squatters' rights to claim the lands on which they had settled. An estimated 50,000 people rushed into the previously designated "Indian Territory" in hopes of claiming 160 acres of land. That land rush set the stage for the organization of Oklahoma Territory, and then the state of Oklahoma in 1907.[2]

Monument depicting the 1889 Land Run in which mostly white settlers rushed in to claim "Unassigned Lands" in what was then Indian Territory. This statue and several others that followed in northern Oklahoma focus on the excitement of the "land runs," which sets them apart from pioneer monuments elsewhere in the United States.

Pioneers of 1889

The statue is a reminder both of the active participation of women in Western history, as well as the devastating impact of the Dawes Severalty Act and the Homestead Act upon Native American tribes who had been granted the entirety of present-day Oklahoma by previous treaties. Oklahoma is unique in that settlers of mostly European origin claimed land that had been previously granted to Native tribes in a series of land runs. After Native American lands were consolidated under the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887, the remaining land was opened to settlers. The process of claiming land was organized in “land run” style, meaning at an appointed time, settlers entered the land, staked out their property, and claimed it as their own. Under the Homestead Act, if they lived on it for 5 years, built a home, and made improvements to the land (typically by farming), it became officially their land after filing their claim with government authorities.

This statue, entitled “Leaping Into History,” was dedicated in 2007 and commemorates Oklahoma settler Nanitta R. H. Daisey who was a participant in the first Oklahoma Land Run on April 22, 1889. Known at the time as "Kentucky Daisey," Nanitta Daisey made newspaper headlines across the country when she leaped from a train to beat others to claim a plot of land. Using stakes and her petticoat, she marked off this land just north of Edmond Station. This statue was erected in 2007 as one of the official Oklahoma Centennial Projects, commissioned as a statewide celebration of Oklahoma’s 100th birthday. Kentucky Daisey’s daring leap into the Unassigned Lands exemplifies the pioneer spirit and an exciting event at the founding of Oklahoma. the statue also serves as a reminder of the way lands that had been promised to Native peoples were later claimed by white settlers through the actions of the federal government.

Leaping Into History Monument 

Heroic-sized bronze sculpture depicting a wedding ceremony between a white cowboy and an Indigenous woman. The local Chamber of Commerce’s dedication plaque describes the statue as “the symbolic wedding uniting Miss Indian Territory and Mr. Cowboy Oklahoma.” This “wedding” between a Native American woman wearing a simple floor-length gown with short sleeves and her hair in two long braids and a young man dressed in a suit and tie, holding his cowboy hat behind his back--“symbolized the twin territories coming into the union as one state.” It depicts the merging of the diverse indigenous and emigrant tribes of Indian Territory and the white settlers who staked claims to their lands to be a happy union.It was common for postwar pioneer monuments to portray young married couples or nuclear families looking forward to a bright future. A more recent monument in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, portrays a white husband, Native wife, and young son. Both monuments suggest that white settlement on Indigenous homelands--and on lands taken from tribes recently relocated to "Indian Territory" from lands further east--produced a unified multicultural society. Yet the consistent portrayal of Native women entering patriarchal unions with white men also can be interpreted as reflecting white cultural dominance. None of the more than 200 pioneer monuments in the United States depict the marital union of a Native man with a white woman.

Bronze monument erected in 1977 to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the state of Oklahoma. It depicts a white cowboy marrying an Indigenous woman. It portrayed the melding of white settlement with the former Indian Territory achieved at statehood.

Statehood

Depicts a settler couple atop a wagon seat racing to claim land as part the 1893 Cherokee Strip land rush. The viewer can see the man holding the reins, but the horses and wagon are implied. The woman's sunbonnet has blown off her head and hangs down her back. The statue portrays action to capture the excitement of the rush to claim lands to which the Cherokee and other Native groups had been removed earlier in the 19th century.The monument was sculpted by Bill Bennett, who grew up in Perry. It was erected in 1993 to mark the centennial of the land rush. Enid, Newkirk, and Ponca City, Oklahoma, also erected monuments marking that centennial.

Centennial monument portraying the excitement of the 1893 Cherokee Strip land rush. It is one of several land run or state centennial monuments erected in Oklahoma in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Hopes and Dreams

To celebrate Oklahoma’s 2007 statehood centennial, Larry and Dolores McClure commissioned a bronze monument in honor and memory of their pioneer family. It was dedicated September 16, 2007 in front of Enid’s new Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center. It was sculpted by popular local artist Harold T. Holden.Harold T. "H" Holden grew up in Enid. "H" Holden sculpted a series of statues depicting the history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. Holden attended Oklahoma State University and the Texas Academy of Art in Houston. He was elected into membership in the Cowboy Artists of America in 2012.Holden's better-known Boomer (located in Stride Bank Center Plaza in Enid) portrays a man riding a galloping horse, rushing to stake his land claim. In contrast, The Homesteaders focuses on a white settler family. Like rural Kansas, Montana and Wyoming pioneer monuments of the 1980s, it emphasizes settlers’ hard work and persistence. Rather than emphasizing white men’s use of horse-drawn technology, however, Enid’s homesteaders labor with hand tools amid a presumably abundant harvest. Where 1950s pioneer family monuments’ emphasis on strapping young sons, The Homesteaders highlights feminine nurturance and the persistence of family ties: the mother holds her young daughter’s hand, who in turn grasps a rag doll. Although The Homesteaders suggests the hard work required to survive on the southern Plains, like other western-themed artworks that appear throughout Enid, it also reassures viewers that--despite the diverse Indian tribes that persisted in Oklahoma--white cultural traditions are here to stay.

One of several monuments erected to mark Oklahoma's statehood centennial in 2007. While most other centennial monuments focus on the excitement of Oklahoma land rushes, local artist Harold T. Holden sculpted a homesteading family to stand in front of the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.

The Homesteaders

This public sculpture depicts a settler camped out with his horse to stake his land claim. A series of bronze reliefs and accompanying interpretive signs depict an Indigenous "Plainsman," "Chisholm" representing the "era of the cattle trails," a cowboy "Wrangler," an Oklahoma land rush "Boomer," and a "Pioneer" driving a horse-drawn plow and seeking to "prove up" his claim. There also is an oil worker "Dressing the Bit."The monument and accompanying relief plaques were sculpted by Harold T. "H" Holden, who grew up in Enid. Holden attended Oklahoma State University and the Texas Academy of Art in Houston. He was elected into membership in the Cowboy Artists of America in 2012.It is the fourth in a series of monuments that "H" was commissioned to sculpt to depict the history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. It is a companion to "Boomer," the first of the series located outside the Cherokee Strip Conference Center in Enid, which also is depicted in the "Boomer" plaque accompanying "Holding the Claim." Newkirk, Perry, and Ponca City, Oklahoma, also erected monuments marking the centennial of the settlement of the Cherokee Strip.

Sculpture depicting a land rush settler camping out with his horse to stake his land claim. Part of a series of sculptures by Harold T. "H" Holden depicting Cherokee Strip history.

Holding the Claim

Erected shortly before the centennial of the 1893 land run that opened this portion of Oklahoma to homesteading, Boomer depicts the Cherokee Strip land run as an explicitly masculine event. In contrast to Leonard McMurry’s 1959 Oklahoma City land run monument, which at a time of nationwide pioneer family commemoration presented land runs as an intergenerational project of laying down roots in the Oklahoma soil, Enid's 1987 Boomer depicts a solo man on horseback racing to stake his claim. The dramatic scene emphasizes the land runs as exciting adventures. A related monument in Enid's Government Springs Park depicts a boomer camped for the night on his claim.Sculpted by Harold T. "H" Holden, who grew up in Enid. It is the first in a series of monuments that "H" was commissioned to sculpt to depict the history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. Holden attended Oklahoma State University and the Texas Academy of Art in Houston. He was elected into membership in the Cowboy Artists of America in 2012.Boomer became a popular image and the official symbol of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. “H” adapted it to produce a commemorative US postage for the Cherokee Strip in 1993.

Bronze monument portraying an Oklahoma settler on horseback rushing to stake his land claim as part of the 1889 land run that opened the Cherokee Strip to white settlement. It is one of a series of monuments commemorating the settlement of the Cherokee Strip by sculptor Harold T. Holden.

Boomer

Residents of Ponca City--home of the famous Pioneer Woman statue and accompanying Pioneer Woman Museum--commissioned a heroic-sized monument to mark the centennial of the Cherokee Outlet land opening. Like other land rush monuments erected in the late 20th century, it depicts a highly masculine scene that counterbalances the Pioneer Woman's focus on women carrying cultural refinement to the frontier. Local artist Jo Saylor’s ten-foot-tall bronze statue of a white cowboy preparing to jump off his rearing horse to stake his claim depicted the masculine excitement of the land rush even more dramatically than Harold T. Holden's popular Boomer that had been installed in Enid, Oklahoma, a few years earlier. Ponca City’s Native American population vocally protested the erection of a statue commemorating white men staking claims to Indian lands. In Ponca City protests focused on the artist’s title for the work, This Land is Mine, which blatantly ignored prior indigenous and emigrant Indian claims to local lands. Around the same time, activists also protested David Manuel's statue titled The Promised Land that was donated to Portland, Oregon, to mark the sesquicentennial of the Oregon Trail.1In protesting Ponca City's This Land is Mine, Native communities chose to overlook the complex history of intertribal tensions in the former Indian Territory and to embrace a pan-Indian tactic to fighting white incursion into Native lands. The Ponca, who had been forcibly removed to the region in the mid-nineteenth-century (and who lent their name to the predominately white town) led public opposition to the Cherokee Outlet land run monument. Ponca tribal member Ed Little Cook was not satisfied by the deletion of the offensive title. Instead, he argued for removal of the statue because it celebrated the theft of Indian lands. The official tribal statement about the statue, penned by Ponca administrative assistant Sherman Bo Warrior, labeled the land runs a form of genocide. Members of the emigrant Cherokee and Ottawa soon joined the fight; tribes that lived in the area prior to forced relocations, including the Osage, who had the strongest historical claim to the area, as well as the Tonakawas, Kaws, Pawnees, and Otoe-Missourias, were far less vocal in protesting the land rush monument.2Vocal protest from the local Indian community persuaded the city to remove the offensive title, and to place the statue in a slightly less prominent location. More than 300 Native protestors sang, chanted and beat a ceremonial drum nearby as the monument was dedicated without an official title before a crowd of 3,500 in September 1993. Ponca City’s centennial committee chair declared flippantly in response to the protestors, “This is one of the greatest honors. I’ve never had background music.”3Racial tensions surrounding the centennial commemoration persisted long after the statue’s dedication. Frustrated with the many Ponca City residents who remained determined to celebrate their white pioneer forebears, the American Indian community chose to erect their own monument and memorial park in which to tell their perspective on local history. Two years after Ponca Isaiah Williams erected a white artist’s composite, peaceful Indian figure in Enid (discussed above), Poncas in Ponca City unveiled Southern Ute/Navajo Cowboy Artist of America Oreland C. Joe’s twenty-two-foot tall statue of Ponca Chief Standing Bear.4 Standing Bear fought for the Ponca people--and by extension all Native Americans--through the United States legal system. In a landmark 1879 civil rights case in U.S. District Court, Standing Bear argued successfully that Native Americans are defined as persons in relation to federal law and entitled to citizenship rights. Oreland Joe’s statue became the centerpiece of sixty-three-acre Standing Bear Park, Museum and Education Center, which seeks to educate visitors on the culture and history of Native Americans in Oklahoma. It also serves as a memorial to a former residential neighborhood that was razed after a Conoco oil leak contaminated its groundwater on that site.5Text of a plaque at the monument's base:<blockquote>CENTENNIAL MONUMENT</blockquote><blockquote>THIS MONUMENT HONORS THOSE WHO RODE ACROSS THE PRAIRIE TO CLAIM A PIECE OF FREE LAND. WHO KNOWS HOW LONG THE "STRIP" HAD BEEN THE SCENE OF NATIVE AMERICAN HUNTING PARTIES? FROM THE EARLY 1800'S IT WAS DESIGNATED AS AN OUTLET TO HUNTING GROUNDS IN THE WEST FOR THE CHEROKEE NATION. IN 1893, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PURCHASED THE OUTLET FROM THE CHEROKEES. THEN, AT HIGH NOON ON SEPTEMBER 16, 1893, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE SEEKING FREE LAND RACED ACROSS ITS BORDERS. ONE PARTICIPANT IS DEPICTED BY THIS BRONZE. HE REPRESENTS A YOUNG HOMETEADER SEEKING A SECURE FUTURE FOR HIS FAMILY.</blockquote><blockquote>THIS PARTICIPANT IN THE BIGGEST HORSE RACE IN HISTORY IS RUNNING FOR A FUTURE FOR HIS YOUNG FAMILY. AS HE JUMPS FROM HIS HORSE WITH STAKE IN HAND HE REALIZES THAT HE HAS FOUND IT.</blockquote>

Monument commemorating the centennial of the 1893 Cherokee Strip Land Run. The original title of the work, "This Land is Mine," was stripped from the work in response to protest from the local Native American community, who objected to the title's suggestion that white settlers were justified in taking Native lands.

Centennial Statue

About the Pioneer Woman Museum and StatueOklahoma oilman and future governor Ernest Whitworth Marland held a design competition in 1926 for a statue dedicated to pioneer women. Invited artists submitted twelve three-foot-tall bronze statues, which toured the country. Bryant Baker, an English immigrant who had served in the U.S. Army during the First World War, won by a wide margin with his design, which he entitled Confidence. A reported 40,000 attended its dedication on April 22, 1930, the anniversary of the first Oklahoma land run [1]. When, in the 1950s, an accompanying museum was planned, architect Rand Elliott fronted the building with a copper awning to echo the statue's sunbonnet. Stamped through the copper are the words I see no boundaries [1; 2].Opened in 1958, the Pioneer Woman Museum is dedicated to women who have contributed to Oklahoma's development. In addition to displays of everyday household items used by pioneer women, the museum features an exhibit dedicated to women journalists and a Walk of Fame showcasing Oklahoma women who broke new ground [1; 2]. Some of the women in the Walk of Fame include historian Angie Debo, whose groundbreaking works on Western history were some of the first to address the mistreatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government; civil rights activist and educator Clara Luper; journalist and Oklahoma first lady Elva Shartel Ferguson; and aviator and NASA trainee Gerrie Cobb [3]. Craft demonstrations and special exhibits are also held in the facility, which was expanded in 1998 [2].

Opened in 1958, the Pioneer Woman Museum is dedicated to women who have contributed to Oklahoma's development. In addition to displays of everyday household items used by pioneer women, the museum features an exhibit dedicated to women journalists and a Walk of Fame showcasing Oklahoma women who broke new ground. Craft demonstrations and special exhibits are also held in the facility. The museum sits adjacent to the 30-foot bronze Pioneer Woman statue unveiled in 1930.

Pioneer Woman Museum

Sculpted by Newkirk native Bernadette Carman, Land of Hope portrays a pioneer man and woman gazing out over their new land claim. A claim stake stands at their feet. Dedicated in 1994 to celebrate the centennial of the 1893 Cherokee Strip land run."Land Runs" are a historical phenomenon closely associated with Oklahoma. When American settlers moved westward in the mid-19th century, Oklahoma was designated as "Indian Territory"--land set aside for Native Americans. Native groups pushed out of the eastern United States were relocated onto the homelands of Indigenous peoples within that Indian Territory. Portions of those land were then taken by the US federal government and opened to homesteading, primarily by white Americans.The 1893 Cherokee Outlet Opening was the fourth and largest land run in Oklahoma. Economic pressures during the so-called Panic of 1893 combined with poor planning and enforcement made it even more chaotic than previous Oklahoma land runs. The 1893 run produced widespread suffering and several deaths.[1]The Cherokee Outlet was one of three areas that the Cherokee people acquired under the Treaty of New Echota that guided their removal from the southeastern United States. But large portions of those recently granted Cherokee lands were taken under the 1866 Reconstruction Treaties. The federal government relocated smaller Native tribes onto the eastern third of the Cherokee Outlet. Construction of railroads through Cherokee lands encouraged cattlemen and homesteaders to occupy the region.[2] For the past half century, Oklahomans have erected monuments that celebrate the excitement of settlers rushing in to stake a land claim on former Native lands. Perry, Ponca City, and Enid, Oklahoma, also erected monuments marking the 1893 land run centennial.[3] While Newkirk's includes a land claim stake, it focuses less on the rush onto the land. Instead, it echoes pioneer monuments elsewhere in the United States that depict young couples or families gazing hopefully out over their newly claimed lands.[4]

Bronze monument commemorating the centennial of the 1893 Cherokee Strip Land Run. In contrast to other Oklahoma land run monuments that focused on homeseekers rushing in to stake their claim, local artist Bernadette Carman portrayed a couple gazing out over their chosen homestead.

Land of Hope

Erected in 2007 at the Oklahoma state centennial in front of the 1993 Woods County Centennial Wall. That brick wall and plaza were installed by the Cherokee Outlet Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) to mark the 100th anniversary of the Cherokee Outlet "Land Run of 1893." For the state centennial in 2007, local artist Calvin L. Graybill (and husband of Cherokee Outlet DAR Chapter Regent Verna Graybill) designed statues of a pioneer man and woman. Most pioneer monuments featuring both a man and woman depict them in heroic size and standing close together as a couple or as part of a family. In contrast, Graybill treated each separately, and the two 3-foot-tall statues stand about 10 feet apart on separate brick plinths. The Alva statues also are more subdued than other land run monuments in Enid and Ponca City that emphasize excitement and movement. Yet like many other pioneer monuments, it depicts the man as the actor, and the woman as his helpmeet. The Alva man looks down as he pounds a claim stake into the ground; the woman gazes out at their land claim as she holds a claim stake with a flag attached to it.

Statues placed in front of the 1993 Woods County Centennial Wall to mark the centennial of Oklahoma statehood in 2007. Local artist Calvin L. Graybill sculpted a man and woman staking their land claim. In contrast to other Oklahoma pioneer monuments erected around the same time, Graybill portrayed each figure separately on its own base.

Pioneer Man and Woman statues

Life-sized statue of a man dressed in wide-brimmed hat, work shirt and trousers, suspenders, and boots. He holds a pick-axe in his proper right hand. On his left stands a rifle. The statue was installed on a four-foot-tall base engraved "PIONEER MAN / Rich Muno / Sculptor / July 4, 1976." It was dedicated as part of US Bicentennial celebrations. It was re-dedicated in 2017.Sculptor Rich Muno (1939-2015) was born in Arapaho, Oklahoma. He developed a love of wood carving growing up on an Oklahoma farm. As an adult he worked as a curator and director at western-themed Oklahoma art museums: at the Thomas Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa for 5 years, followed by 20 years at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. Muno left then left the museum world to devote himself to sculpting and wood carving.Muno's portrayal of a single male settler is unusual for its time. Heroic sculptures of solo male pioneers were popular in the first two decades of the twentieth century. But beginning in the 1920s, western monuments tended to focus on frontier women, such as the well-known Pioneer Woman monument in Ponca City, Oklahoma. After World War II, pioneer monuments tended to depict young married couples or nuclear families. In 1977 the former territorial capital of Guthrie dedicated a monument commemorating Oklahoma statehood. It depicts a similarly attired male cowboy exchanging marriage vows with a young Indigenous woman, and was intended to represent the marriage of Indian Territory with white settlement.

Life-sized bronze sculpture by Rich Muno erected to commemorate the perseverance of Oklahoma homesteaders. Dedicated as part of local US Bicentennial celebration in 1976.

Pioneer Monuments in Oklahoma

Centennial Land Run Monument

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information