Heavener, Oklahoma - Just think of it as Oklahoma’s first billboard. It is 12 feet high and 10 feet wide, which sounds ordinary enough. The odd thing is this billboard is solid stone and, if Gloria Farley is correct, the letters were etched on this slab of rock by a Scandinavian explorer around a thousand years ago. Vikings in Oklahoma? This impressive carving is high on Poteau Mountain overlooking the fertile Poteau River valley where Heavener, Oklahoma is located. Farley first saw the stone back in 1928 when a childhood friend, Rosemary Kemmerer, asked young Gloria Stewart if she wanted to join Mr. Kemmerer and Rosemary on a hike to see “Indian Rock.” Although none of the Indians in the area had an alphabet, locals couldn’t explain these strange symbols any other way.
A couple of years later, the mystery took a very different turn when Rosemary noticed a Sunday school pamphlet illustrating runes, an alphabet used by ancient Scandinavians. The two young pals both saw a similarity between the illustration and “Indian Rock” right then, but it would be 35 years before Gloria got serious about solving the riddle.
Gloria Stewart married J. Ray Farley and moved to Ohio, however the family came back to Southeastern Oklahoma to live in 1950 and Mrs. Farley began talking to some of the old timers about similar carvings located near Poteau River. While tracking many of the stories proved fruitless, additional Oklahoma rune stones turned up in 1954 and 1959. Years later Farley learned of another stone at the Kerr Museum that had been found in the central Oklahoma town of Shawnee.
Gloria Farley’s work led to the establishment of Heavener Runestone State Park, a short drive off the scenic Talimena Drive that runs from Talihina, Oklahoma to Mena Arkansas. Mrs. Farley believes that Norse explorers worked their way down the East Coast and then sailed shallow-bottomed boats up the Mississippi River and its tributaries. If Mrs. Farley’s research is correct, Oklahoma’s first billboard proclaimed “Glome’s valley,” and it was carved around 900 A.D.
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