FORT SUPPLY—The antique shop Wooden Wagon Wheel on the main highway through Fort Supply is haunted.
“There’s so much activity, it’s insane,” said manager Sheena Calkins, daughter of owner Sandy Peterson. She and her mother firmly believe that the spirits of at least two former inhabitants continue to occupy the historical building.
Built sometime in the early twentieth century, the brick building started out as a bank on one side and a drugstore on the other side.
Prior to 1909, that corner in Supply (the township established in 1903 wasn’t renamed Fort Supply until 1943) was home to the town bank and a hardware store, both freestanding wood clap structures as evidenced by an old photograph in the Oklahoma Historical Society archives.
According to Peterson, twice the bank burned down before being rebuilt in brick the third time around. Today her building is the only original structure in the town of Fort Supply.
Of course, the old army post east of the town still exists. Historic Fort Supply was established in 1868 as Camp of Supply or Camp Supply for the winter campaign against the Southern Plains Indians, according to OHS. The Land Run of 1893 opened the Cherokee Outlet to non-Indian settlement and the police presence of the troops at Fort Supply was no longer required. In late 1894, the post was abandoned, the property turned over to the Department of the Interior, and the newly-minted state of Oklahoma opened Western Oklahoma Hospital, the first state-operated mental institution in 1908. Ninety years later, the minimum-security prison William S. Key Correctional Center moved onto the grounds before shutting down in 2021.
Peterson—who grew up in Vici—remembers as a little girl in the 1960s having ice cream at the drugstore’s soda fountain. While the soda fountain is no longer there, many of the original showcases from the drugstore remain as do residual spirits of an era gone by.
“We’ve heard rattling and running around upstairs,” Calkins commented, referring to the upper level that once served as the drugstore owners’ private residence.
The antique shop’s salesperson Katherine Cox concurred, adding the resident ghosts, affectionally known as Dr. and Mrs. Jackson, have been known to toss about merchandise or throw things across the room on both levels.
“You can feel the vibes,” Peterson said. Nevertheless, she said only once since she bought the building has she been wary of being in a room with them.
All of the staff said the Jacksons and any other spirits in the building are relatively harmless, merely knocking things off shelves or disrupting displays.
Patrons to Wooden Wagon Wheel may not even notice Dr. Jackson or Mrs. Jackson’s presence aside from the skeletons that respectively pay homage to them outside in the surrey or inside near the front counter.
Bringing the dream to life
Antiquing is in Peterson’s blood. Her parents did antiques and flea markets in the Vici area. As the next to the youngest of five kids and the only girl, she said none of her brothers showed an interest in the family business.
“I’m the only one,” Peterson said. A professional picker, she began collecting items over the years across the United States, from coast to coast to the Mexican border.
She first opened her antique shop in Woodward in 2018 and then moved it into the country between Woodward and Sharon. However, the pandemic hit and she lost her husband of 15 years to COVID-19 in 2021.
They had raised their family in Fort Supply so Peterson gravitated back to the tiny Northwest Oklahoma town of 300 residents.
“I wanted to bring something back to Fort Supply. There’s heritage here,” she said. She purchased not only the historic building that she’s bringing to life, but the whole block because she has a dream.
Along the western wall of Wooden Wagon Wheel is a small attached building with a separate entrance that will serve as a dog grooming business called Bubbles and Bark in the new year. There is a sunroom above it that will eventually become Peterson’s office rather than the crowded hidden room in the upstairs of the antique shop.
In a shed to the west of antique shop is metal artwork, which is extremely popular and is what keeps Wooden Wagon Wheel afloat, Peterson said. The “boneyard” between the antique shop and the metal art shed features other collectibles such as old Champlin cans and signage.
And what perhaps the staff is most excited about is “we will have a bathroom someday,” Peterson said.
At present there is no plumbing in the brick building; she said it was a shock to discover there was none, considering the former residence upstairs and the drugstore once had a soda fountain. The public are told to go down the street to the convenience store, which recently reopened and is the only other business in town, since the single toilet for the staff is actually a RV portable toilet.
The renovations are slow going, but Peterson is optimistic about the future. She plans to make the bank side of the brick building into her living quarters as a studio apartment and hopefully move in next summer.
In the meantime, Peterson is refurbishing furniture at the back of the antique store and would love to teach classes there.
Wheeling on through
“Fort Supply is fading away and we’re trying to keep it alive,” Calkins said about Wooden Wagon Wheel.
The antique store’s name points to the region’s history. Fort Supply was a critical supply hub in Indian Territory on the Fort Dodge-Camp Supply Trail, an old buffalo trail and subsequent wagon trail supplying the fort. It was used to move goods, soldiers, and livestock in the 1870s and 1880s.
2nd Street that runs east to west on the north side of town was the wagon trail, Cox said, connecting the military road crossing to the fort. When the stagecoach came through, she added, it would deliver wood for the homes and for the railroad tracks.
Hence, Peterson derived her store’s name Wooden Wagon Wheel.
She said one of her favorite parts of owning a shop on the main throughfare through town is the travelers and truck drivers who wheel in.
“I get to meet people from all over the world,” Peterson said. “They become friends and I get to listen to their stories.”
The fun of antiques, she noted, is people who stop by reminisce about this or that when they spot a certain item in the store.
“We have everything,” Peterson said, whether it be Native American pieces, sage and crystals, jewelry, collectibles from decades past, clothing, home décor, antique furniture, musical instruments, vintage toys, or even a wind-up record player that still works.
Because every person who walks in the door is personally greeted and oldies play over the speaker system, “everybody goes out laughing and smiling,” she said. “They enjoy themselves as they go back in time.”
Wooden Wagon Wheel is open for the month of December Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Regular winter hours in the new year will be Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the second and fourth Sundays from 1-5 p.m. Follow updates about the shop at Facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560819160619.