Oklahoma's Favorite Son - Hartshorne, OK
Posted by: 
hamquilter
N 34° 50.749 W 095° 33.478
15S E 266117 N 3858929
This mural honors Will Rogers in downtown Hartshorne.
Waymark Code: WMZD2W
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 10/22/2018
Views: 0
This mural is painted on the east wall of a two-story brick building at 843 Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Hartshorne. No artist or date is shown. The mural has been here awhile as the paint is beginning to erode.
The mural shows Will Rogers standing, holding a coiled rope. Will Rogers wasn't from Hartshorne, but the entire state of Oklahoma considered him a favorite son. Born on 11/4/1879, Rogers was a little bit of everything: an actor, vaudevillian, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist and social commentator. He was tragically killed on August 15, 1935, accompanied by Wiley Post in a small plane which crashed in Alaska. The country mourned these two men.
In the upper right of the mural is a pale ghostly plane, and in the upper left corner, two drovers and a steer. In the lower left corner is a old-timey radio, and in the right hand corner is Rogers twirling his rope as he speaks his humor, being captured on film by a cameraman. To the right of the standing Will Rogers at the center of the mural is a man sitting on a bench reading a newspaper. The large headline reads: Will Rogers Killed".