Day 12 -- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Fort Smith, Arkansas -- 283 Miles

Today was our day for driving. Since we've had several 100-mile days recently, we thought perhaps we should save our seeking out of interesting stop-offs and try to make up for the short days. We still had a couple of disks left from the Wild Bill Hickok series, so we queued up what has proven to be a fascinating tale, and hit the road.

The first thing we learned was that Oklahoma City's commuters are just as hair-brained as commuters in any other city with a ticking clock on their minds and nothing much else. So we navigated carefully, stayed in the center lane to avoid onramps, and made sure the running lights were lit so everyone could see us from a distance.

Once beyond the borders of Oklahoma City, the speeding commuters seemed to mellow out and we just cruised along at our 65 mph and enjoyed the story of Wild Bill

By noon we were already just 45 miles from Fort Smith, our evening's destination, so we pulled into a unnamed tiny town and cruised the back streets looking for a park with sufficient parking to have our lunch. Failing at that endeavor, we just picked out someone's vacant lot down a side street and made that do. No one who passed our way seemed to give as a second glance, so our spot beneath a small forest of spreading trees worked out nicely.

It was at lunch that I suggested we visit the historic Fort Smith Museum since it appeared that our expeditious driving would allow us a couple of hours in the afternoon to spend time doing something fun and still get into camp by a decent hour. To that end we picked out a camp not far from the center of town, called in our reservation, and then proceeded to head for the Fort Smith Museum.

That came to a screeching halt when we were warned by Concetta's cell phone of a 15 minute delay because Interstate 40 would be reduced to one lane just up ahead. The wait, the signs advised, would be in the neighborhood of a quarter hour. We weren't happy, of course, but what could we do. Those highway workers would be cutting into our "fun time," but we had to suppose they had good reason.

So it wasn't long before traffic began to slow down and then to virtually stop. We couldn't see just how long a line of traffic was ahead of us as it went around a curve, but we had the feeling it was going to be long.

As you've probably noticed whenever you've been stuck where two or more lanes of traffic are reduced to one, there are two kinds of drivers to contend with: those who faithfully merge one after the other in an orderly fashion; and those who speed by the merging traffic to try and grab a better spot way at the head of the line where they expect to push their way in.

Personally, I absolutely LOATH those sneaky bastards and usually do everything I can to both disuade them and prevent them from succeeding in passing me, even to the point of driving in the middle of two lanes to partially cut the sneaks off.

If you've ever been in this situation, you've probably noticed that big-rig drivers are absolutely hip to the various techniques for stopping cheating drivers passing them when the merge is taking place. The guy ahead of us today just didn't move out of the vacating lane which would have allowed a half dozen frenzied drivers to blow by him and us and rush toward the head of the line. He crept forward with the merged traffic but didn't merge.

Deciding to emulate the big-rig driver, we kept hogging the merging lane right along with him, and I could tell from my side mirror that there were a bunch of drivers of sporty little cars just itching to get by us.

At one point the big-rig driver let himself drift just a bit too much out of the merging lane and a middle-aged woman in a high-priced BMW saw her chance. She came roaring up from behind and screeched to a halt right beside us with half her tires sagging into the soft grass beside the highway. She stopped because the big-rig driver saw her coming as well and moved back fully into the vacating lane.

When the woman slammed on the brakes right beside my door I blew the horn and then rolled down my window and pointed a finger back down the way she had come in an effort to command her to behave. But she was having none of it, and I could see that she still intended to get by the trucker ahead.

Just then the traffic started to creep forward again, and I immediately eased further left to cut her off and succeeded in leaving her sitting there, half on the road and half in the grassy slope beside the highway. And there she sat fuming as the line of traffic rolled forward a few feet at a time. After our rig had passed, she immediately squeezed in behind us, and for the next mile or so she frantically weaved back and forth appearing first in our left side mirror and then in our right side mirror.

Eventually, the line of traffic had fully merged, orange cones appeared on each side of us, and there was no further opportunity for anyone to squeeze by us and speed to the front of the line. The woman had been defeated, and I hoped she had learned her lesson.

Amusingly, when we had finally cleared the work area and eastbound traffic lanes had been restored, the woman's BMW blew by us like we were standing still, though we were back up to our usual Interstate speed of 65 mph. I imagine that she was topping 85 mph by the time she disappeared from sight, and was probably cussing us for ruining her whole afternoon. But I regard the events in the Oklahoma work zone as just doing my part for restoring balance in the universe.

By the time 3:00 p.m. rolled around, we had left the Interstate in Oklahoma, crossed the Arkansas River into Fort Smith, Arkansas, and we still had good couple of hours to kill before we needed to find our camp located only about ten miles away.

Fort Smith first came to prominence when the United States, under a series of Presidents, made every effort to remove Native Americans from the southeastern part of the country and move them beyond the Mississippi River and into the future state of Arkansas.

President Thomas Jefferson greatly facilitated this effort by affecting the acquisition of the so called Louisiana Purchase which added some 530 million acres to the United States. At that point, some governmental officials surmised, there was lots of potentially uninhabited lands for the removed natives to inhabit. Trouble was, the lands weren't vacant. By 1817 when the Cherokee started showing up beyond the Mississippi, the Osage people were already there and determined not to share their hunting grounds. This resulted in much conflict and the two tribes were preparing themselves for war.

To alleviate the tension, and attempt to broker some sort of peace, the United States decided to place a substantial fort on the banks of the Arkansas River in 1817. The fort was substantially built and was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall. When Arkansas became a state in 1838, the fort was relocated and built even larger as it had become an important stop on the movement westward by Americans.

There is of course much history that took place in Fort Smith with the Army, the indians, and the settlers moving west, but Fort Smith also played a major role in the quest for law and order in the new state of Arkansas and surrounding states. Starting in 1872, a federal court was established with jurisdiction over the surrounding Indian Territory and all aspects of law enforcement thereabouts.

Judge Isaac C. Parker, nicknamed "the hanging judge," tried to create a moral force and a strong court. He heard over 13,000 cases and only really hanged 79 prisoners for capital crimes over his 24 years on the bench. But during that time, literally hundreds of deputy marshals rode out into the territory to maintain law and order.

I had known about Fort Smith and the "hanging judge" for most of my life as I began extensively reading of western history when I was in the 6th grade. Naturally, I was really excited to finally get to come here. Though our visit was all too brief, I will always be grateful that we came this way.

And that's it for now. We wish you many exciting travels of your own.