Sooner Park play tower

Bartlesville, Oklahoma, United States

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

The Sooner Park Play Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is a 50-foot steel climbing tower designed by architect Bruce Goff in 1963 and given to the city’s children in 1964. It was restored and reopened in 2014.

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Sooner Park play tower

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Site-level location · 36.7420° N, 95.9808° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Architect Bruce Goff designed a spiral steel climbing tower for children in a Bartlesville park. TravelOK describes a circular spiral steel stairway enclosed in steel fencing, leading to an observation and resting platform 50 feet off the ground. The City of Bartlesville says the tower, designed by Goff, was presented in 1964 as a gift from H.C. Price to the children of Bartlesville; a university photo page by Mary Ann Sullivan says Goff was commissioned in 1963 by Mrs. Harold C. Price, and that the tower and park land were gifts from the Price and Adams families.

Sullivan’s page quotes Goff describing a stairway on which children “can jump up and down (to make noise!) and run up and down, safely enclosed in a steel fencing cylinder”. It says the tower is built of mesh fencing, perforated plate, textured tread plate and steel rods and was painted red, yellow and green.

The tower deteriorated. TravelOK says it was closed in the early 1990s, and the city says it was closed for more than 20 years. For its 50th anniversary the city set aside funds and gathered donations; TravelOK says it was restored by the Service & Manufacturing Corporation and reopened in fall 2014.

The Art Institute of Chicago holds Goff’s design for the Playtower, dated 1963 and measuring 91.5 by 61 centimetres; the museum lists it as not currently on view. The city’s Sooner Park page, updated in April 2026, names the tower as one of the park’s most notable features, in a park that also has a miniature golf course, a swimming pool and a bandshell.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

A 50-foot steel spiral-stair play tower in Sooner Park, a city park that also has mini-golf, a swimming pool and a bandshell. The City of Bartlesville’s page, updated April 2026, describes the tower as restored and presented again to the public in 2014.

ACCESS

Sooner Park, Bartlesville, a public city park run by the city’s Parks & Recreation department. Check with the city before visiting for any limits on climbing the tower.

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World's Largest Totem Pole

Foyil, Oklahoma

Ed Galloway's Totem Pole Park, near Foyil, Oklahoma, centres on a totem pole about 90 feet tall that Galloway built from 1937 to 1948, using about 28 tons of cement, six tons of steel and 100 tons of sand and rock, according to SPACES Archives, which counts around 200 carved images. TravelOK bills it as the world's largest concrete totem pole. The park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1999) and is managed by the Rogers County Historical Society.

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56 km away

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