At slightly over five meters high. the "Pioneer Woman" statue was sculpted by Bryant Baker (1881-1970). It was completed in 1929 on a commission from oilman Ernest Whitworth Marland (1874-1941), who presented it to the people of the state of Oklahoma. It is representive of the dauntless women who helped pioneer the Oklahoma Territory in the late nineteenth century. Among those pioneering women who establish their homes on the prairie were my great-grandmothers.

One of the more than 40,000 people attending the statue's dedication, on 22 April 1930, was my then eight years old mother. She was accompanied by her paternal grandmother, who herself followed her husband into the Cherokee Outlet on the day of the great land run. She and her children rode into the unsettled territory in a wagon to their new home. There they spent the night under the stars on the open prairie, near Perry, Oklahoma, and began their future.