The Cross Timbers, stretching from southeast Kansas across Oklahoma and deep into north Texas, played an important role in Oklahoma history. They also play an important role in the state’s ecology today. The Cross Timbers are the upland forests and wide grasslands with widely spaced trees and glades of open spaces in eastern and central Oklahoma. They have an abundance of post oaks, black jacks, hickory, and elm trees plus heavy undergrowth of grape vines and greenbriars.

Washington Irving, the prominent 19th century American writer best known for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle was fascinated by the Cross Timbers when he visited what is now Oklahoma in 1832.

Irving and other early travelers found much of the thick forest impassible. It was Irving and other early travelers who apparently gave the Cross Timbers their name. Irving studied them and wrote that Plains Indians on hunts west of the Cross Timbers frequently started fires that swept east penetrating the forests, “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.”

Irving added that he would not “easily forget the mortal toil and vexations of the flesh and spirits, that we underwent occasionally, in our wanderings through the Cross Timber. It was like struggling through forests of cast iron.”

In the 19th century as today, the Cross Timbers mark the dividing line between eastern forests and the grassland of the southern plains. They also served as a natural dividing line separating the Plains Indians to the west from tribes to the east.

Two years later, Col. Henry Dodge traveled through the Cross Timbers in what is now southern Oklahoma. Dodge described them as a great thicket “composed of nettles and briars so thickly matted together as almost to forbid passage.”

Josiah Gregg, a Santa Fe trader who traveled through them several times during the early 1840s, described the Cross Timbers as the “fringe” of the great prairies. “Most of the timber appears to be kept small by the continued 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 production.”

Before the arrival of the white man, scientists believe the Cross Timbers covered more than 30,000 square miles. The size began to shrink after Indian Territory was opened to settlement in 1889. Settlers began to clear trees in leveled areas of the Cross Timbers for cultivation or grazing. This continued into the 20th century.

Today the size of the Cross Timbers is considerably smaller. Some scientists believe that only about 500 square miles of ancient Cross Timbers still survive in the rugged uplands of eastern Oklahoma. Growing in the soil under the trees is a wealth of plant species, some rare and native to Oklahoma.

Natural conditions have seemingly preserved the surviving Cross Timbers. They are not ideal for lumber production. Then too, these short, stout oaks grow on steep terrain that is not suitable for agriculture.

In one area of northeast Oklahoma the ancient trees are protected. Near Sand Springs is the Keystone Ancient Forest Preserve. It was there that scientists found a red cedar growing on a sandstone bluff that was more than 500 years old. Not far away was another ancient post oak more than 400 years old and standing only 20 feet tall.

Elsewhere in rugged areas of the Cross Timbers, countless other short, stout oaks unsuitable for logging survive in poor soil and on steep slopes, land not suitable for agriculture.

The Cross Timbers in Oklahoma is one of the least disturbed forest areas left in the eastern half in the United States.

The early travelers marveled at the Cross Timbers and brought them to the attention of easterners. This created much interest in the Cross Timbers of modern Oklahoma during the 19th century. That interest, however, gradually faded as the settlement occurred.

During the 20th century the size of the Cross Timbers gradually declined at the hands of man. The decline went generally unnoticed. Even today the remaining Cross Timbers receive little attention from the public and are rarely associated with Oklahoma’s colorful history.

All of this may be do to the subtle beauty of the Cross Timbers. Even the fact that the Cross Timbers constitute the largest single ecosystem type in Oklahoma is generally forgotten. It is a system in which animals and plants depend on in their environment, and the environment depends on them.

The Cross Timbers are a big part of Oklahoma’s cultural heritage. More than a century ago they provided wood for the Indians and pioneers. They provided a home for wildlife that kept the human population fed and clothed.

The Cross Timbers also provided hiding places not only for wildlife but for humans trying to avoid hostile Indians or for Indians wanting to ambush their enemies. The surviving Cross Timbers provide oxygen and protect the soil from erosion.

While the surviving Cross Timbers remain important to the state’s ecology, they are also important as living monuments to the history of Oklahoma and are a treasure that should be preserved.

(Note: “Oklahoma Reflections” is researched and written by David Dary, emeritus professor of journalism, at the University of Oklahoma and the author of 20 books on the American West. The art was produced specifically for this series by Carolyn Chandler, an artist and illustrator of 45 years, who now resides in Norman and specializes in oil painting.)