The Simple Sign Read......

Welcome to the 20 Million Dollar Project State Highways from Three Directions and Railroads Where Rails, Water & Highways Meet Come to Langley for Business Lots & Home Sites See Clifford Bogle, Town Site Owner And that’s how a town, generated by the construction of the Pensacola Dam in the late thirties, got its start. There was little room for argument as to who the town father was. A short time after I had discarded my corporate soldier status in the metroplex for the lure of Grand Lake, I met my first Bogle. Aunt Edith, as she was called, ventured into my first Grand Lake enterprise and introduced herself. She matter-of-factly informed me this was Bogle country, and if you shook a bush, if a rabbit didn’t run out a Bogle would. I have never forgotten that first Bogle encounter, the twinkle in her eye and the sheer enjoyment she seemed to get from life itself. Somewhere along the way, I met Cliff Bogle. I later would learn of the history and folklore surrounding the man who all would agree birthed Langley at the West end of the Pensacola Dam. We lost Cliff in July of 1998 at the tender age of 94, and with him a lot of history and testimony to a life gone by. During 1988, in conjunction with Langley Day and the annual birthday celebration of the Pensacola Dam, The Grand River Chronicle, now known as The Chronicle of Grand Lake, did a feature on Cliff and his contributions to the Grand Lake area. It read like this……….. And Now for the Rest of the Story! The first lot was deeded in Langley on February 11, 1928. The name of the sellers on the document read Clifford and Reba Bogle. With that first sale, Langley was born, and Cliff Bogle became the father of a town. He donated lots in the town for churches, the post office and even took it upon himself to buy a gasoline powered generator to give the town its first taste of electric power. He traveled to Arkansas to buy the 36’ poles which would support the town’s power lines. He recalled, “We had to dig the holes by hand and peel the pine bark off the poles.” As Cliff and Reba reflect back on those early boom days in Langley, it’s as if it were yesterday. Cliff talked about how he had the town plotted by George C. Campbell, a registered professional engineer from Bartlesville, how he planned for Main Street to run right onto the dam, how the west end of the dam was relocated to the north by approximately 1-1/2 blocks from where it was originally designated, thus leaving Main Street to the south. Some say the west end was moved to an enable a Chicago financier or an unnamed politician to make some big bucks from property holdings. Cliff Comments, “I was just a farm boy who didn’t know anything about politics. If I knew what I know now, I could have stopped it.” He recalls how the first grocer was a Mr. Richardson, the first medical doctor was Dr. Friedline and the second was Doc Finley. How Dr. Turner was the town dentist, the Pruitts had the first café and how Harvey Romigh had the pharmacy and dry goods store. Bogle originally bought the 120 acres, which included the town site, from a local family in a financial bind in 1925. The six years prior to selling that first town lot, the land was planted in cotton. In those days, the Bogle family famed a lot of cotton acres. According to the town’s founder the average yield was about one bale per acre and an average bale weighed between 800 and 1,000 pounds. The cotton was usually taken to John Willey’s cotton gin in Ketchum. Cliff refelected back on those times when he said, “I got enough seed from the cotton to trade John for the ginning plus plant next years crop and help feed my daddy’s cattle through the winter.” From time-to-time, he would just store his cotton until prices were right to sell. Cliff Bogle’s roots go back to Virginia where his grandfather was a Methodist preacher. The elder Bogle moved the family to Council Bluff, Kansas and on to Afton in the 1880’s where he founded the First Methodist Church. Cliff recalls, “Granddad had a one horse buggy he would drive down this direction, far out into the sticks, and then he would travel on foot to reach the people. It made no difference to him, black, white or Indian. He would baptize them in the river.” Granddad later moved onto Bristow and founded another First Methodist Church, but Cliff’s father remained in this area to raise a family of ten children. One of the more successful boom businesses birthed by the town was Edith’s Pig Stand. It was owned and operated by one Bogle’s sisters Edith Jerome. Some well known local citizens received their first business exposure there like Norma Riley of Norma’s Real Estate and Dorthy Clary, the town clerk. Another prominent business was Cliff’s Drive-In operated by the Bogles for over twenty years. There was also a movie house where Dollie’s Lounge now stands. As the Bogles Look back at it all, they say they would make a few changes in their town plans. They would include some zoning in the town’s rules, but when you consider this guy had never built a town before, he did a lot of things right. They were certainly simpler times which generated a town, by a river, that would eventually be home to the Pensacola Dam and a magnificent lake that we enjoy today. See Ya’ Around the Pond!