Robin Cole-Jett
Mar 1, 20181 min
The cobble stones, also called “cannonballs,” used in the structures (pictured below) constitute good examples of Indigenous architecture of the western Red River Valley. The stones were quarried from the rivers surrounding the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma. Oklahomans began using the native round, granite rocks at the turn of the 20th century to adorn school houses, homes, hotels, and even Fort Sill. Some of the stones made their way to buildings in northwestern Texas, too.
Saddle Mountain, Kiowa County, Oklahoma. Not sure what the use of this building was. It is concrete, double pen, with cannonballs (granite stones) embedded in the mixture before it dried. (I’d live here!)
Victory School near Saddle Mountain in Kiowa County, Oklahoma. I would have walked closer but there were A LOT of sticker bushes.
Cannonball architecture exists all over Medicine Park, a beautiful resort town at the base of Mount Scott in the Wichita Mountains, Comanche County, Oklahoma.
The abandoned gas station in Medicine Mound, a ghost town in Hardeman County, Texas, also sports cannonball architecture.