Happy Birthday To Me

Doug Dawgz Blog is one year old today!

Yea! When I started this Oklahoma City History blog on July 15, 2006, I knew that it would be fun for me, but I had no clue whether it would be an inviting place for others.

I've posted 65 times so far which is about 5 & 1/2 posts per month on the average.
In the past 365 days, the blog has had 19,725 visits which include during those visits various posts being opened 39,597 times. I'm quite pleased with the measure of interest and I take that as a good indicator that at least some of what I've put together has been interesting to many.

This post traces a few "high points" during the 1st year, and solicits any comments about desired topics in the year to come.

Traffic. Traffic has been global, though, as expected, most comes from the United States and most of that comes from in or near Oklahoma. I only recently "upgraded" my Sitemeter account from a "free" to a "premium" one (meaning that I now pay a few dollars for added features) and it tracks more closely the past 500 visitors. Since I upgraded on July 11, there haven't been 500 visitors. But the USA map below shows the past 363 hits in this country (without zooming, several "hits" overlap each other, so don't bother counting) ...

Increased Blog "Circulation." The mere mention of Doug Dawgz Blog by Steve Lackmeyer in the February 25, 2007, Sunday Oklahoman, in an article anticipating the next day's opening of the Skirvin Hilton, changed the "visibility" of the blog.


Steve's article said,

Doug Loudenback was one of the lucky ones. The downtown attorney’s Web site, dedicated to city history, caught the attention of the Skirvin Hilton’s publicist. Loudenback was invited for a private tour.

Loudenback previously posted historic Skirvin photos on his blog, www.dougdawg.blogspot.com, and even took extensive new photos of exterior renovations.

He didn’t restrain his glee at adding photos from his Jan. 26 tour: “The official opening of the Skirvin Hilton is scheduled for Monday, February 26, 2007!!! YEA!!! YEA!!! YEA!!! HOOAHH!!!”

On that day and for several days following, Doug Dawgz Blog received a serious spike in visitors ... see the chart below (yellow is # of visitors, orange + yellow is # of opened pages by the visitors).

HOOAHH is right! I was ecstatic with the blog's increased attention (as well, of course, with the grand reopening of the Skirvin)!

Oklahoma Rising. The Vince Gill & Jimmy Webb Centennial Anthem, mixed in with rotating Oklahoma images but mostly from Oklahoma City, was and remains a hit!


The post which has generated the most personal e-mail as well as telephone calls has been the December 2006 Oklahoma Rising flash files post (since modified several times). The post contains instructions about how to save the file to and play it on your own computer without being connected to the internet. I've been gratified that several organizations (schools, cub scout troops, others) have requested permission to use the flash files in presentations for their students, etc. However, I've gotta say that the most touching such request was from a squad leader stationed in Iraq ... the Sergeant wanted permission to play the flash file for his squad ... tell me that that didn't bring tears to Doug Dawgz eyes!

Beverlys Chicken-In-The-Rough. Old Doug Dawg was just waxing nostalgic when making this post. Little did I know that people from all over the country were interested, as well.


Not too many comment in the blog anymore (since I started moderating comments after some ugly and distasteful comments related to Okc & the NBA), and that's too bad. The Beverlys post tops the number of comments to a single post at 20. People all over the country, even the world, seem to want to know about Beverly's Chicken-In-The-Rough! It has persistenly been one of the most frequented posts since it was originally posted in July 2006.

Skirvin Posts. Ahhh ... Doug Dawg loved to follow this most excellent development in and for Oklahoma City! And, thanks to Dan Mahoney, publicist for the Skirvin Hilton, some great "inside" pics were had and posted here.


As popular as the Beverlys post were the 4 Skirvin posts. The 1st drew 5 comments; 14 commented on the 2nd (the January inside tour); and the 4th, grand opening post, had 1, for a total of 20 comments.

Springlake. Everyone old enough to do so remembers Springlake. But, it was Norman Thompson, who gratuitously made several hundred images available, that made this excellent post possible.


While not drawing as many comments (4), the Springlake post may outrank all others in terms of recorded "hits." My Sitemeter account tells me that there have been 108 "Entry Page" hits to the Springlake post since its initial posting on April 2, 2007, and that ain't too shabby. After the post here, OETA picked up several of Norman's pics posted in Doug Dawgz Blog and largely based one of their Centennial video clips on those pics. See OETA's Springlake video clip.

OKC & NBA Posts. It's no secret that Doug Dawg is a Hornets Fan! See my "picture" at the top of this post ... a drawing made in the Ford Center at either a preseason game or the 1st regular season game in 2005.


Responses (comments) to these posts caused me to change my "Comment" policy ... 1 or 2 posters can't seem to tolerate the joy and pride and pleasure we in Okc take about hosting the Hornets for 2 seasons and/or being a candidate for the Supersonics & Storm should those teams move from Seattle. While their infantile comments have been deleted here, those comments led to my current policy of moderating all comments before they appear here, and I regret that. Of these Okc-NBA posts, the one which gave me the greatest personal pleasure was the 2 year Hornets Retrospective flash file post ... the flash file linked there takes about 9 minutes to run.

The Dust Bowl. This post picked up a lot of attention, too. Where did the term "Okie" come from? It came from this era as scores of thousands of hard-hit farmers and others migrated to points west, usually California.


Interest in the "Dust Bowl" continues to be a topic of interest. Other websites found the post to be of sufficient interest to link to the Dustbowl post. It was in this era that "Okies" came to be a derrogatory term, even if most of us now relish and take pride in referring to ourselves as "Okies."

Asian District & Chinese Underground. This post, too, continues to draw attention from around the country.


Was there an underground Chinatown in downtown Oklahoma City? Absolutely! I just wish that we could know more about it.

Deep Deuce. The 3 part series on Deep Deuce history, beginning here, was one of my favorites to research and has been popular with readers.


This important part of Oklahoma City's history was largely unknown to "the white man" in its heyday, during the days of forced segregation, during the days of the great jazz musicians and one great author that emerged from this geographically small part of the city. Too, it is the story of great-ness rising from greater-still adversity, and is part of our proud heritage.

Wiley Post. The pair of Wiley Post articles was one of the most fun to put together!


If you don't know that Wiley hung his hat in Oklahoma City, that he was the first to circumvent the planet in an airplane (with a navigator), was the 1st to do so "solo," that he had ticker-tape parades in New York City, that he is buried in Oklahoma City, and lots of other stuff, you should!

Your Comments. That's my happy birthday post to me! I welcome comments about topics to cover during the next year, as well as any others, should you care to give them.

Several items are on my "to do" list ... more "Cops & Robbers" posts, the Oklahoma Heritiage Association, restaurants gone by, and several others. Maybe I'll finish my long dormant project of making the revised "clickable" downtown Oklahoma City map! If you want, please post your comments in this thread about Okc History topics you would like to see explored during the next 12 months.

Thanks for dropping by and for a great 1st year!