Folk Art in Foyil Oklahoma - A Visit to Ed Galloway's Totem Pole Park
Ed Galloway’s Totem Pole Park:
A Folk Art Detour in Rural Oklahoma
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
It’s amazing what you can find when you slow down enough to look.
On a recent drive through northeastern Oklahoma, we made a detour to Ed Galloway’s Totem Pole Park in Foyil, and it turned out to be one of those stops that remind you why the side roads matter.
After retiring from teaching in 1937, U.S. Army veteran Ed Galloway returned to his first love: art. A self-taught sculptor with no formal training, he built a workshop on his farm and began carving whatever caught his imagination, small trinkets, wall art, musical instruments, and eventually, something much larger.
The centerpiece of the park, the towering, unmistakable totem pole, began as a large sandstone boulder near his home. Galloway carved the stone into the shape of a turtle, then built upward: a 90-foot tower of wood and cement adorned with nine levels of birds carved in bas-relief, brightly painted and inspired by Native American imagery. The project took eleven years to complete. Inside the pole, the walls are painted with landscapes, turning the structure inward and upward.
Other totem poles dot the property, each intricately carved and vividly colored, though none quite rival the scale or ambition of the central tower. Picnic tables rest on smaller totems, and an unusual eleven-sided building, designed to resemble a Navajo hogan, houses many of Galloway’s wooden carvings and handmade violins.
After Galloway’s death in 1962, the site slowly fell into disrepair and was largely forgotten. It wasn’t until 1989 that the Rogers County Historical Society stepped in, restoring the park and preserving the work of an artist who built simply because he felt called to build. In 1999, the park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Most of Galloway’s surviving work lives here, but one piece, Lion in a Cage, carved from a single sycamore log, resides at the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Missouri.
That one’s still on my list see.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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