Gans, Oklahoma

Everything Gans is known for

0 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Gans

Songs About Gans

No songs reference Gans yet.

Artists From Gans

C
Cal Smith
country Pop: 45

Rivers & Roads in Song near Gans

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Gans.

Highway I 40 20 songs Arkansas River 8 songs U.S. Route 59 7 songs Canadian River 7 songs Interstate 49 3 songs

History of Gans

Bass Reeves: The Deputy Marshal Who Couldn't Read His Warrants RoadyGoat

1875

You're in the heart of old Fort Smith, where Judge Isaac Parker ran the federal court for the wild Indian Territory, and where one of the West's greatest lawmen pinned on his star. Bass Reeves was born into slavery around 1838 and grew up unable to read or write. When Parker took the Fort Smith bench in 1875, the marshals needed deputies who knew the Territory and could speak its Native languages, and Reeves knew it better than almost anyone. He became one of the first Black deputy U.S. Marshals west of the Mississippi. Because he could not read, he had his warrants read aloud and memorized every name and charge, then served them without fail. A master of disguise, he would ride into outlaw country dressed as a tramp or a poor farmer, hiding his badge and cuffs under rags. He was a dead shot who was never wounded, though he had his hat, his belt, and even his horse's reins shot away. In 1878 he ended a long hunt for the outlaw Bob Dozier in a single gunfight. Over thirty-two years he was credited with more than three thousand arrests. A bronze monument to him stands here today. (Sources: National Park Service, Fort Smith NHS; Encyclopedia of Arkansas; TSHA Handbook of Texas.)

RoadyGoat → · 14.8 mi away

Before the Badge: The Fugitive Who Learned the Territory RoadyGoat

1862

Long before he wore a badge, Bass Reeves crossed this country as a fugitive. Taken into the war by the Texas family that enslaved him, he broke away and fled north into Indian Territory, where he lived for years among the Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole. He learned their languages, their customs, and the lay of a land few outsiders could navigate. When emancipation made him a free man, Reeves came to the Van Buren area, just across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith, and built a life as a farmer and stockman, raising a large family of ten or eleven children. That hard-won knowledge of the Territory and its peoples is exactly what made him so valuable when the federal marshals came looking for deputies in 1875. The skills he picked up as a runaway became the foundation of a thirty-two-year career as a lawman. (Sources: TSHA Handbook of Texas; Encyclopedia of Arkansas; National Park Service.)

RoadyGoat → · 19.4 mi away

Fort Smith National Historic Site

1817

Federal courthouse where Judge Isaac C. Parker, the 'Hanging Judge,' presided over Indian Territory justice from 1875 to 1896, sentencing 160 people to death.

14.7 mi away

Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center

800

One of the most important pre-Columbian archaeological sites in North America, Spiro was a major political and religious center of the Mississippian culture from 800 to 1450 AD.

11.0 mi away

Everything Near Gans

58 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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