Radio: Tribes take over management of state parks in Oklahoma

When budget cuts led the Oklahoma tourism department to find new homes for seven state parks in 2011, two of them went to Native American tribes. Both are open and doing well, but each has faced its own difficulties in the transition.

Of the seven former state parks, only Wah-Sha-She Park near Pawhuska closed during its transfer to new management.

From fall 2011 until spring 2012, no one could enjoy the unique Hula Lake sunsets from the park’s rocky shoreline, or camp at the handful of sites in this remote patch of well-maintained land carved into the wilderness in northern Osage County.

“We had some difficulty, internally — our own branches of government,” Rick Lasley, Executive Advisor of Programs for the Osage Nation, says. “Members of congress were saying, ‘Why would we want to take on a park that loses money annually?’”

Lasley says former Chief John Red Eagle wanted to take the park over in 2011, but it was a tough time economically and the Osage Nation Congress was concerned about the cost of bailing out the State of Oklahoma.