Mr. Wright, recently of Stillwell, but now at the Confederate home in Ardmore will be 90-years-old March 10. To the writer this seems an impossibility, so keen and alert is his mind.
He served with General Stand Watie and his Confederate Indian brigade during the Civil War. He was in camp at Fort Arbuckle in the winter of 1864 and remembers its mistletoe when everything else was dead. The following summer while still stationed there, he discovered what he calls the "burning hole.
As he remembers, this hole is on the south side of Wild Horse Creek right at its edge. It was approximately a 40 gallon barrel round hole. About two and a half feet down was water boiling like a pot all the time. The water was black but he was positive it wasn't oil His Cherokee father had seen oil in Georgia long before he had moved to Oklahoma. It was probably gas, but he doesn't know.
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http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos10a/WildHorseCreekHellHole.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_Watie
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Mr. Wright experimented with this strange phenomenon, carefully, and the least bit fearfully at first. He poked around in it with sticks, then he tied a few leaves on a stick, touched a match to them and threw the stick into the hole. An explosion followed and a blue blaze consumed the leaves and stick. It seemed to burn on top of the water but just as soon as the stick was consumed the blaze went out like a blaze on a cup of whiskey when a saucer is placed over it.
That summer, Mr. Wright's father, Cornelius Wright, and his uncle, Joel Bryant visited him. He took them to see this wonder of wonders as he believed it to be, and to experience the sensation of throwing a torch into it. His father put leaves on a stick, lighted it and then unheedful of his son's warnings, stooped down over the hole to place the stick on the water. It flashed like powder! And scared was no name for Mr. Wright's father! He exclaimed, "Hell ain't half a mile from this place!"
Soon after that Mr. Wright's company was called away. Mr. Wright left with the sole intention of soon returning to learn more about his new discovery but fortune prevented. He was wounded shortly after leaving Fort Arbuckle in the Battle of Cabin Creek and lay in a hospital at Perryville until the close of the war. Now old, afflicted, and unable to make the short trip to Wild Horse creek, he spends his time wondering and musing about it.
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Patti, prochette@Juno.com
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