Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area is an approximately wilderness park in

Tulsa Tulsa ( ) is the second-most-populous city in the state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tul ...

in the US state of

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

. It is managed by the Tulsa River Parks Authority and open to the public for hiking, mountain biking, and trail running. The main entrance is at 67th Street and Elwood Avenue in

West Tulsa West Tulsa is a local name given to an area situated in the west section of the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States which includes various communities to the west and south of the Arkansas River. As development between Sand Springs and Tulsa co ...

Size and location

Turkey Mountain is a hill occupying a wide area on the west side of the

Arkansas River The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in Colorado, specifically ...

in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The summit is above the river below, offering a view of Tulsa. The park stretches between

Interstate 44 Interstate 44 (I-44) is an Interstate Highway in the central United States. Although it is nominally an east–west road as it is even-numbered, it follows a more southwest–northeast alignment. Its western terminus is in Wichita Falls, T ...

to 71st Street, and US-75 to the

. The park started in 1978 with 147 acres purchased with Tulsa County, federal, and private funds. By 2023, the park had expanded to about 650 acres. In that year, about 88 additional acres were added, 73 of which were purchased by River Parks with sales tax funding, and 15 coming from private donation. The additional 88 acres are located across a street called Elwood from the core area of the park, and private donation is being utilized to create a safe path to link the properties.

Trails

Turkey Mountain 30 marked trails between in length, for running, hiking, or mountain biking as well as over of unmarked trails. The 25 mile long ''River Parks'' paved trail passes through the Turkey Mountain , close to the river, connecting the area to other river side parks in Tulsa. In June 2016, the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

designated the Turkey Mountain trails as part of the

National Recreation Trail The National Trails System is a series of trails in the United States designated "to promote the preservation of, public access to, travel within, and enjoyment and appreciation of the open-air, outdoor areas and historic resources of the Nati ...

system. The Turkey Mountain Master Plan calls for 40 miles of multiuse trails, of which more than 30 had been completed by January 2024. In addition, a project is underway to link Turkey Mountain with Bales and Lubell parks, which have an additional 9 miles of multiuse trails between them.

Additional Improvements

A 20,000 square foot park maintenance facility is being constructed on land adjacent to Turkey Mountain, on the north side of 71st St. and east of Elwood. Plans call for a new Visitors Center east of Turkey Mountain's lower parking lot off Elwood, and additional parking.

Claimed petroglyphs

Now completely gone, but close to the river there were several markings in the stone, one of which was claimed to be the letters "gwn" (claimed to mean fair or white hair). These were believed by writer

Barry Fell Howard Barraclough Fell (June 6, 1917 – April 21, 1994), better known as Barry Fell, was a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. While his primary professional research included starfish and sea urchins ...

to be petroglyphs left by

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

European travelers. The idea of

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories, many of which are speculative, propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere prior to Christopher Columb ...

by Europeans, apart from the

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population ...

, is considered a

fringe theory A fringe theory is an idea or a viewpoint that differs significantly from the accepted scholarship of the time within its field. Fringe theories include the models and proposals of fringe science, as well as similar ideas in other areas of schola ...

pseudoarchaeology Pseudoarchaeology (sometimes called fringe or alternative archaeology) consists of attempts to study, interpret, or teach about the subject-matter of archaeology while rejecting, ignoring, or misunderstanding the accepted Scientific method, data ...

.Debbie Jackson and Hillary Pittman
" Fascination with Turkey Mountain is legendary"
''

Tulsa World The ''Tulsa World'' is an American daily newspaper. It serves the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is the primary newspaper for the northeastern and eastern portions of Oklahoma. The printed edition is the second-most circulated newspaper in the sta ...

'', March 12, 2015. The park itself says the sandstone involved is very soft and vulnerable to erosion which would cause any markings to quickly fade, so at most the carvings were done in the 1920s by oil field workers who were scouring the area for oil.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official web site
Geography of Tulsa, Oklahoma Hills of Oklahoma Protected areas of Tulsa County, Oklahoma Tourist attractions in Tulsa, Oklahoma Pseudoarchaeology