Historical Descriptions of the Ancient Cross Timbers

Irving, Washington, 1886. A Tour of the Prairies. John B. Alden, New York.

“The Cross Timber is about forty miles in breadth and stretches over a rough country of rolling hills, covered with scattered tracts of post-oak and black-jack; with some intervening valleys, which at proper seasons, would afford good pasturage. It is very much cut up by deep ravines, which in the rainy seasons, are the beds of temporary streams, a tributary to the main rivers, and these are called “branches”. The whole tract may present a pleasant aspect in the fresh time of the year when the ground is covered with herbage; when the trees are in their green leaf, and the glens are enlivened by running streams. Unfortunately, we entered too late in the season. The herbage was parched; the foliage of the scrubby forest was withered; the whole woodland prospect, as far as the eye could reach, had a brown and arid hue. The fires made on the prairies by the Indian hunters, had frequently penetrated these forest, sweeping in light transient flames along the dry grass, scorching and calcining the lower twigs and branches of the trees, and leaving them black and hard, so as to tear the flesh of man and horse that had to scramble through them. I shall not easily forget the mortal toil and vexations of the flesh and spirit, that we underwent occasionally, in our wanderings through the Cross Timber. It was like struggling through forests of cast iron.”pp. 78-79.

de Pourtales 1832. On The Western Tour With Washington Irving; The Journal and Letters of Count de Pourtales. ed. G.F.Spaulding. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman OK.

“We spent the morning in one of the most beautiful stretches of forest that I have ever seen. There were magnificent, sparsely scattered trees and twenty varieties of climbing plants, some bright green and others delicately shaped and turned red by the frost. The entire wood seems to burst with the many colors of autumn. The ground was covered with thick waves of horse-bean plants, forming an impenetrable, tangled carpet lifted up but not pierced by the underbrush. Nearby flowed the wide, majestic, red Arkansas, with its steep, wooded, rocky bank on our side and its wide, sandy beach, caused by the spring floods, on the other side… “Beyond this fertile riverbank stretched rocky hills, furrowed by almost-dry mountain torrents and covered with yellowed grass in which, here and there, grew stunted oaks. From the top of the rocks could be seen the meandering turns of the Arkansas, the long sinuous valley at the bottom of which snaked the bloody Red Fork, rocks and woods which stretched to infinity, and the yellowish line of the eternal and majestic prairies.” pp. 51-53.

Gregg, Josia. 1844. Commerce of the Prairies (The 1844 Edition Unabridged.) Edited by Hanna, Archibald, and Goetzman. Philidelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Co,1962.

“The Cross Timbers vary in width from five to thirty five miles and entirely cut off the communication betwixt the interior prairies and those of the Great Plains. They may be considered as the ‘fringe’ of the great prairies, being a continuous brushy strip composed of various kinds of undergrowth; such as black-jacks, post-oaks, and in some places hickory, elm, etc., intermixed with a very diminutive dwarf oak, called by the hunters ‘shin-oak.’ Most of the timber appears to be kept small by the continual inroads of the ‘burning prairies;’ for, being killed almost annually, it is constantly replaced by scions of undergrowth; so that it becomes more and more dense every reproduction. In some places, however, the oaks are of considerable size, and able to withstand the conflagrations. The underwood is so matted in many places with grapevines, green-briars, etc., as to form almost impenetrable ‘ roughs,’ which serve as hiding-places for wild beasts, as well as wild Indians; and would, in savage warfare, prove almost as formidable as the hammocks of Florida.” p. 283.

Costello, David F. The Prairie World.1969. Crowell Co. New York.

“Originally the prairie grew beneath the oaks as an understory. Grazing has since reduced the grasses and allowed an undergrowth of shrubs. The tall grasses are still present and grow luxuriently in some woodlands as well as in the prairie openings. The area is of geological interest since the existence of the cross timbers is largely traceable to “beaches” left by the retreat of the sea in Cretaceous times. The beaches were alternately sandy and clayey and these today are characterized by savanna or forest, and grassland, respectively. The combination of grassland and woodland, with its many miles of grassland-timber border, and the added influence of streams and rivers crossing the vegetation bands, provides a remarkable variety of habitats for plant species and animal life hardly excelled anywhere in the mid-continent prairie.”

Agnew, Brad.1975. Dodge Leavenworth Expidition of 1834. The Chronicles of Oklahoma. 53:

“The next day the regiment entered the Cross timbers, a natural border seperating the Plains indians from the eastern tribes which was described as a great thicket “composed of nettles and briars so thickly matted together-as almost to forbid passage.” p.385

Wright, Murial H. 1961. Civil War Report on the Battle of Round Mountain The Chronicles of Oklahoma. 39.

“The Cross Timbers and the Arkansas River formed the natural Western boundry for the Creeks and the Cherokees before the Civil War, even though their land claims extended far West beyond these barriers” p. 365.

Stein, H. F., and R. F. Hill. 1993. The Culture of Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman.

“At about the location of the state capital complex in Oklahoma City, porus sandstone begins to dominate the surface of central Oklahoma, signifying the edge of the Cross Timbers forest belt, best described as a dense thicket of dwarf oak which sprawls across the red hills of central Oklahoma from Kansas to Texas. Dominated by blackjack and postoak in the uplands, valleys have groves of taller oaks-red, black, and white- plus groves pecan, hickory, and walnut trees of considerable height (Oklahoma Board of Agriculture 1959). In Summer, the Cross Timbers form a verdant, dark green blanket against the ferrous red soil, the stereotypical Oklahoma landscape pined for by Woody Guthrie when he sang of “those Oklahoma hills where I was born.” The soils vary from highly erodible sand to clays that resemble brick in color and consistency. This large area of central and Eastern Oklahoma was farmed for a few years after statehood but the soils failed and the region largely returned to scrub oak or grazing land. Many of the early oil fields of the state were in the Cross Timbers, supporting boomtowns for the first half of the century and leaving a legacy of environmental disruption in some areas. The topography of the Cross Timbers is gently rolling except for a number of distinct north-south ridges, cuestas of tilted sedementary rocks, which parallel each other into Kansas. These ridges maintain a suggestion of angularity similer to that of the western mesas, although they are covered by dense oak forest. Limestone appears in the Osage Hills and continues across northeastern Oklahoma, rising into the Ozark Plateau, which is bounded by the rugged Cookson Hills at its southern margin. The Ozark country, with its clear streams, and thickly forested hills, continues into Missourie and Arkansas. Following the straight edge of the Kansas border five hundred miles across northern Oklahoma leads from a distinctly eastern forest environment in the Ozarks to a distinctly western landscape of arid, high mesas in the area where Oklahoma, Colorada, and New Mexico meet.”