The Roots of a Red Fern: Wilson Rawls and the Heart of Cherokee County

On the banks of the Illinois River, where mist settles between the Ozark hills and the sound of coonhounds once echoed through the night, a quiet boy from Cherokee County dreamed of becoming a writer. His name was Wilson Rawls, and though few could have imagined it at the time, his story would come to define rural Oklahoma for generations of readers.

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Born in Scraper, Oklahoma, in 1913, Rawls grew up on his mother’s Cherokee allotment land tucked deep in the countryside, lit not by electricity but by kerosene lamps and imagination. His mother, despite little formal schooling herself, taught him to read by the light of those lamps. And when she gave him a worn copy of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, something stirred in him that would never leave.

“I want to write stories like that,” he told her.

Life, though, had other plans. The Great Depression forced his family to move west in search of work, and Rawls spent years as a carpenter and laborer, carrying both hammer and hope from one job to another. Along the way, he filled notebooks with stories five full novels that he kept hidden out of embarrassment over his spelling and grammar. Eventually, in a moment of shame and frustration, he burned them all.

Everything might have ended there if not for Sophie, the woman who would become his wife. When he finally confessed his dream, she didn’t laugh she told him to start again. And he did. In three short weeks, Rawls rewrote the story that had been living inside him for decades: Where the Red Fern Grows. He wrote without punctuation; she patiently edited every page.

The Story That Grew from the Ozarks

Set in the Ozark hills of Oklahoma, the novel tells the story of Billy Colman, a young boy who dreams of owning two hunting dogs. With determination that mirrors Rawls’ own, Billy works for two years to buy his pups Old Dan and Little Ann and trains them to become the best coonhounds in the valley.

Their adventures are both joyous and heartbreaking. Together they brave icy rivers, chase clever raccoons through dense forest, and win a championship coon hunt. But when a mountain lion attacks, the dogs give their lives to protect Billy.

At the end of the story, Billy returns to their graves to find a red fern growing between them a sacred plant from an old Native legend that says only an angel can plant a red fern, marking the spot as holy.

It’s a story of loyalty, loss, and the bittersweet passage from childhood to adulthood. And though written for young readers, it has always spoken just as powerfully to adults who remember what it means to dream and to grieve.

From the Page to the Hills of Tahlequah

When Where the Red Fern Grows was published in 1961, few expected it to become a classic. Yet it captured something rare and honest the bond between people and the land, the value of hard work, and the enduring spirit of rural Oklahoma.

In time, the story returned home. When Hollywood came to film the 1974 movie adaptation, the crew chose Natural Falls State Park, just outside Tahlequah, to stand in for Billy’s world. The red dirt, the green hills, the rushing water it was all still there, unchanged.

Today, that spirit lives on in Tahlequah at the annual Red Fern Festival, a celebration inspired by Rawls’ beloved novel.

The Red Fern Festival: A Story Still Growing

Every April, the town comes alive with echoes of Rawls’ story. Vendors line the streets with crafts and handmade goods. Children laugh as they race rubber ducks down Town Branch Creek. Families share funnel cakes and kettle corn beneath red and white banners that flutter in the spring breeze.

There are hound dog field trials, a Miss Red Fern pageant, and even film screenings of the movie that made Rawls’ story famous. But the real heart of the festival isn’t the food or the music it’s the way it brings people together.

In a town once described as the “capital of the Cherokee Nation,” the Red Fern Festival reminds visitors that storytelling still has power. It honors a man who rose from poverty to write one of America’s most beloved tales and the land that shaped both him and his story.

The Quiet Hero of Cherokee County

Wilson Rawls never sought fame. When he died in 1984, he had no great fortune to leave behind. What he left instead was something far more lasting: a story about faith, love, and the sacredness of simple dreams.

Just as the red fern grew between Old Dan and Little Ann, marking their bond as holy, Rawls’ words have taken root in the hearts of readers across generations.

And each spring, as Tahlequah fills with laughter and the sound of hounds, the people of Cherokee County honor that quiet boy from Scraper the one who believed that stories could grow, even from the roughest soil.

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