Heavener: Runestone Park and City History

Heavener: Park, City History, and Historic Traces

If you’re looking for a hotel in Heavener, you can first consider what you’d like to focus on during your stay: the trails, scenic overlook, and festival at Heavener Runestone Park, or the city’s history and buildings. The park covers 55 acres and is located in Heavener. Other topics range from an account passed down about the Runestone to the town’s architecture and settlement history. This lets you distinguish between landscape, cultural, and historical interests without reducing them to a single reason for visiting.

The Runestone: Markings and Tradition

The Heavener Runestone is a large sandstone with eight markings. They were likely created by Vikings between 600 and 800 AD as a boundary marker. An oral tradition tells that a Choctaw hunting party discovered the stone in the 1830s. The presumed date of its creation and the reported discovery are many centuries apart and refer to different periods in its history: a possible explanation for the markings and a later story about the discovery. If you’re interested in the stone’s history, you can consider both accounts in their respective time frames.

Trails, Views, and the Park Festival

Heavener Runestone Park has just over two miles of hiking trails, as well as a scenic overlook with a view of the city of Heavener. These offer different focuses for your stay: the trails provide a specific distance for hiking, while the overlook looks out over the city. This gives you both the trail distance and the view as possible planning considerations, without implying a particular walking time.

The park has tent sites, some of which have electrical hookups. If a hookup is important for your camping plans, note that only some of the sites have one. The park also hosts the annual Heavener Runestone Viking Festival. If the festival is the reason for your trip, check the dates for your desired year before planning around it.

The City’s Architecture and History

In Heavener, the Old City Hall, Theater and Masonic Lodge is significant at the local level for its neoclassical architectural style. Alongside the history of the Runestone, this provides a specific building with its own architectural focus. The Heavener Public Library was built in 1939 as part of the WPA program. An expansion completed in 2008 included renovating the existing library into a spacious historic meeting area. The library can be visited; check current opening hours before your visit.

The settlement history also provides a distinct point in time: it began in 1880, when Zachary Taylor Ward and his wife, Tabitha Hickman Ward, who was Choctaw, moved their store from Skullyville to what is now Heavener. The years 1880, 1939, and 2008 mark different aspects of the town’s history: the beginning of settlement, the library’s construction, and its later expansion. Together with the history of the Runestone, these offer different historical perspectives, from a presumed early creation and an orally reported discovery to the development of the city and its buildings.

Discover more destinations: Poteau, Hodgen.

For the broader travel overview: Le Flore.