Nowata County

The town of Oologah on the west shore is where Will Rogers was born, and the family ranch house is on the bluff above the lake now, moved there when the water came up.

Delbert grew up on a farm on the Nowata County side on the northeast end, and he was fifteen in the summer of 1976, which was two years after the lake had reached full pool, and the lake had come up over land his family had farmed for two generations.

Their old place was underwater.

He said his father would take him out in a boat some evenings and stop over a spot and say, "This was the barn," or, "This was where the well was," and there'd be nothing there but brown water and a few fence posts still sticking up.

He doesn't say why.

He said most people don't ask.

Nowata County, where Delbert's farm is, is where we leave the water because in 1975, it was where the whole country was looking for something else.

The last thing you'd call Nowata County is Bigfoot country.