Totem Pole Park (Ed Galloway's)

Ed Galloway was born in 1880 in Springfield, Missouri, and moved to Oklahoma in the early 20th century. He worked as a manual-arts teacher at the Sand Springs Children's Home — a residential school for orphans and disadvantaged children in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, just west of Tulsa — for nearly three decades. He taught woodcraft, sculpture, carving, and various trades to the children in his care, and he developed substantial practical skills in concrete work, metalcraft, and sculptural carving across his teaching career. His teaching philosophy emphasized hands-on making as a form of personal expression and self-respect, and his influence on his students was reportedly significant.

After retiring from teaching in the mid-1930s, Galloway and his wife Villie purchased a small property outside Foyil with the intention of building a folk-art park as their retirement project. The decision was unusual — most retired teachers in rural Oklahoma in the 1930s did not embark on multi-decade outdoor sculptural projects — but Galloway had been planning the project for years and was committed to seeing it through. He began construction of the totem pole in 1937 and worked on it almost daily for the next 11 years, often with Villie's support and occasionally with help from local Foyil residents who were intrigued by the project.

Galloway's stated intention was to build the park as a tribute to Native American culture — particularly the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Osage nations whose traditional territories included the Oklahoma land where he was working. He was not himself of Native American descent and the cultural respect dimension of his project has been the subject of some contemporary critical reflection. But Galloway's intent appears to have been genuinely admiring rather than exploitative — he studied Native American art forms, attempted to incorporate authentic motifs into his work, and dedicated the finished park to Native American heritage in his personal correspondence.

The totem pole itself is a genuinely extraordinary work of folk art. The 90-foot height makes it the tallest concrete totem pole in the world; the broader category of "totem poles" includes much taller wooden examples in the Pacific Northwest, but the concrete-construction variant has no rivals at the Foyil scale. The pole is built around an internal armature of welded steel pipe — a substantial engineering achievement for a self-taught builder working alone in rural Oklahoma in the 1930s — covered with hand-troweled concrete that Galloway sculpted as he applied it.

The pole's exterior is decorated with over 200 hand-carved images. Faces, animal figures, geometric motifs, and Native American-inspired symbols cover the entire surface in dense visual layering. The bottom section features a turtle figure (a recurring symbol in Galloway's work, drawn from Native American creation stories), surrounded by faces representing different tribal traditions. Mid-pole sections include eagles, bears, deer, and abstract geometric work. The upper sections taper toward a stylized top finial that Galloway intended to evoke traditional totem-pole forms.

The original paint scheme used vivid primary colors — reds, blues, yellows, and greens — that Galloway mixed and applied by hand. The 1990s restoration matched the original palette as closely as possible based on surviving photographs and paint samples. Ongoing maintenance requires the pole to be repainted approximately every 7-10 years to prevent weathering damage; volunteer crews coordinated by the Rogers County Historical Society and the Kansas Grassroots Art Association handle the periodic repainting.

After completing the totem pole in 1948, Galloway began work on a second major structure on the property: the Fiddle House, an 11-sided building intended to house his collection of hand-carved violins (fiddles) and serve as a small museum of his sculptural work. The Fiddle House was completed in the early 1950s and is itself a significant folk-art structure — the 11-sided floor plan, the hand-built concrete walls, the wooden interior beams, and the integration of sculptural details into the architecture make it a notable building in the broader history of American folk-art architecture.

Inside the Fiddle House, Galloway displayed several dozen violins that he carved by hand during his teaching years and into retirement. Most of the original fiddle collection has been lost or dispersed over the decades since Galloway's death; a small number of remaining fiddles are displayed in the building today along with photographs of Galloway, documentation of the construction process, and interpretive panels covering the park's history. The Fiddle House operates as a small museum during park visiting hours.

The broader park grounds include several smaller concrete sculptural works — figural pieces, decorative animals, and architectural fragments that Galloway built between major projects. The surrounding meadow and oak woods are part of the visitor experience; the park has a meditative, slightly mysterious atmosphere that distinguishes it from more curated outdoor sculptural collections. The combination of the towering totem pole, the geometric Fiddle House, and the smaller sculptural works produces a coherent folk-art environment unique in Oklahoma.

The park is located at 21300 East Highway 28A, just outside Foyil, Oklahoma — about 10 miles northeast of Claremore via State Highway 28A. The drive from Claremore is genuinely scenic, passing through rural Rogers County farmland and small-town Foyil. From Tulsa the park is about a 45-minute drive northeast; from the Blue Whale at Catoosa it is about 25 minutes north. The park has a small gravel parking area along Highway 28A directly adjacent to the totem pole; signage on the highway is modest but the totem pole itself is visible from a considerable distance.

The park is open daily from dawn to dusk year-round with no admission fee. The Fiddle House interior hours are more limited — typically Saturdays and selected weekdays during the warmer months, staffed by Rogers County Historical Society volunteers. The outdoor totem pole and surrounding sculptural works are accessible whenever the park is open. Photography is encouraged and the totem pole is one of the most-photographed folk-art works in Oklahoma. A small donation box near the parking area supports ongoing maintenance; suggested donations are $5 per visit but any amount is welcomed.

Plan 30-45 minutes for a focused visit covering the totem pole, the Fiddle House (if open), and the surrounding grounds. Folk-art enthusiasts with serious interest can easily spend 60-90 minutes examining the totem pole's detail work and reading the on-site interpretive signage. The park has no restrooms, no cafe, and limited shaded seating — visitors should plan accordingly. The site is largely accessible for visitors with mobility limitations; the grounds are relatively flat and the totem pole is viewable from the gravel parking area without significant walking.