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CCC Legacy Journal -  May
June 2009, Vol. 33, Issue 4
Camp Karn—Fighting the Good
Fight
Boxing
Ring Revealed—Co. 1853 SCS-8 Oklahoma
By:
Benjamin Clark, Curator of Education, Oklahoma History Center
While researching monuments and exhibits
dedicated to the CCC in Oklahoma, I ran across an
article in the Daily Oklahoman
in
the late 1980s that mentioned a stone entrance gate and an elevated stone boxing
ring. It just happened I would be in Geary the next day visiting a friend.
Why not have an adventure and see what was there?
Perhaps I could even get a photo of a marker for my article on monuments.
The
only information I had was that it was located one mile south of town.
Geary hasn't grown much since the 1930s, so it should be pretty easy to find.
Or so I thought.
According to the "all knowing" internet, it
would take just over an hour to arrive in Geary from my home in
Oklahoma
City. Arriving nearly 20 minutes early to meet my friend, I thought
I'd reconnoiter the area where I thought the camp would be. Over half an
hour later, I was frustrated. Nothing. Maybe the town had grown more
than I thought. Maybe it shrank. I widened my search area and still
found no sign of the camp.
 Going
out there, I knew the camp at Geary, could be tough to find. Unlike the
camps in Oklahoma City, they weren't building parks, but performing soil
conservation duty. It was designated SCS-8, Co. 1853, Camp Karn, according
to the state listing posted on the CCC Alumni website. I knew it would be
a long-shot to learn the origin of the name Camp Karn, but a guy can hope.
Frustrated, I met my friend for lunch
and was introduced to her grandfather and a friend of his who had
lived in Geary for a long time. She remembered the camp, but said it
was north of town, not south. She didn't remember any boxing ring, or even
sure if the stone entrance was still there, but she was certain of it being
on the north side of town.
We trudged out again, in search of the
mysterious Camp Karn. After driving past the water treatment facility
north of town, I noticed two stone pillars next to the driveway. Six
such pillars continued from one end of the property all the way down to the next
intersection, about a mile east of the main road through Geary. The
water treatment facility took up only a small corner of the parcel, most of it
was under till, the rest was overgrown. Trees grew in clumps mostly in the
center of the land not in cultivation.
From the road I noticed one clump of
weeds were growing in a way to suggest they were growing up through something
substantial and structural. I crossed the
field and into the weeds.
It was hard to tell at first, but then I was certain, it was the stone boxing
ring. It was very conveniently located so that folks from town would be
able to come out and enjoy the fights. I started to pull down the weeds,
trying to discern how much of the boxing ring was left. A couple good
sized stumps sat in the middle and along the edges. It had large trees
growing through it at one time, but these had been cleared, though it is falling
into neglect again.
Clearing some of the weeds revealed a
corner post of the ring still intact. I was excited to see the three
hand-forged iron rings still in place that had once held the ropes. I took
a few snapshots to pass along to Oklahoma's State Historic Preservation Office.
Sadly, no marker has been set to remember the CCC in Geary, Oklahoma, but the
countless productive farms surrounding it are certainly testament to the hard
work in soil conservation that was done all those years ago.
Benjamin
L. Clark
Curator
of Education
Oklahoma
Museum
of History
Oklahoma
History
Center
2401 N. Laird Ave.
Oklahoma City
,
OK
73015
-7914
(405)
522-0793
bclark@okhistory.org
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