The Totem Pole BBQ and Music Fest on Saturday at Ed Galloway’s Totem Pole Park near Foyil, Oklahoma, will help mark the recent completion of the restoration of the park’s large totem pole.
The repainting of the complex’s 90-foot-tall totem pole by artists Margo Hoover and Erin Turner began last summer, and they finished all but the very top by fall. Turner returned this spring to finish the restoration, reported the Tulsa World.
The festival will run from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the park, which is four miles east of Foyil on Highway 28A. Barbecue, acoustic music and arts vendors will be gathered there as a fundraiser to help support the site.
The Kansas Grassroots Art Association oversaw the earlier restoration of the site in 1992. The Tulsa World article goes into detail about how Galloway’s place — originally intended as his retirement home — deteriorated because of neglect, vandalism and theft after his death in 1962. The now-well-maintained site now has a caretaker; the Rogers County Historical Society acquired it in 1989
Totem Pole Park isn’t on Route 66, but it remains a popular side trip.
Galloway built the main totem pole between 1937 and 1948. Totem Pole Park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
(Image of Totem Pole Park by Gail Lynn Rogers Tackett via Facebook)
We may try to make this event
It would make a good weekend road trip for us , and be something different for us to do
Just to throw this in several places say it is Chelsea, okla .
Foyil and Chelsea are about 8 miles apart