Honey Springs Battlefield, Oklahoma, United States

4Dreamer794040 5:00 PM May 2, 2022

Great visit to Honey Springs!
Had a great visit to this hidden gem of a historical park in eastern Oklahoma. Brand new visitor center with lots of great displays and an informative video. Very helpful docent. Battlefield itself was gorgeous - lots of flowers and some good interpretive markers out on the trails. Highly recommend this battlefield for anyone interested in civil war or Oklahoma history!

3janehyde82 5:00 PM Jun 14, 2018

Honey Springs or Stagnant Water? It could go either way.
We went to the Honey Springs new visitor center after it opened in April 2018 to listen to a program on Civil War period musical instruments. The speaker, dressed in period clothing, demonstrated several instruments including a banjo, guitar, fiddle, bones, cigar box fiddle and also a Jew's harp and a jaw bone. The program was accurate and interesting. We toured the rest of the exhibits in the visitor's center which were interesting although there weren't any artifacts from the Honey Springs battlefield. They are planning to bring a diorama from the old building to the new visitor center/museum. This will be very helpful for visitors to see the battlefield topography once it is in place. The overall museum is very well done, if a bit sparse, at this point. We decided to take the driving tour of the battlefield and were given a booklet to "Guide to the Interpretive Trails." The booklet provides all the information that is not readable on the signs and you can take it home with you. The battlefield itself is overgrown but some people prefer to see it in the condition it would have been in during the battle in July of 1863 and that is what you see. If you come expecting to see a pristine park environment (like Vicksburg and Gettysburg) you will be disappointment. Other battlefields have cannons marking positions of the lines, this battlefield has none. It would be good if there were cannons here and there to mark positions. There is no question that the staff and volunteers work hard to make the museum and battlefield what it can be with the funds they have. Reading most of the other reviews embarrassed us for our state to have this as the only representation of a civil war battlefield in Oklahoma. This is the result of cutting taxes to the point where services have to be cut to the bone including having signs that are not readable in our only Civil War Battlefield. We enjoyed our visit to the new museum and we hope it signals a new chapter in improvements to the long-neglected battlefield. Note: My traveling companion and friend wrote this review with me.