When University of Oklahoma ’61 BA and ’63 law alumnus and Oklahoma history buff Joe Crosby spotted a slim book with an embossed cover the color of aged leather at a library book sale, he knew immediately that he’d discovered a tiny piece of the university’s history.

Prairie Schooner and Other Poems was published in 1929 by one of Oklahoma’s pre-eminent history scholars, Edward Everett Dale, for whom Dale Hall is named on OU’s Norman campus. 

In the book’s introduction, Dale noted that entries in the collection of more than 50 poems were sometimes written in cow camps or homesteaders’ dugouts, featuring odes to his family and creations such as The Freshman, which recalls a very different college experience complete with “ …  a wide-brimmed hat upon your tangled locks and plow-buckle shoes on your aching feet.”

Born in 1879, Dale was a working cowboy before becoming a country teacher and school superintendent in Oklahoma’s Old Greer County. He received a BA from OU in 1911 and both a master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard University. 

Dale joined OU’s faculty in 1922 and served for nearly 20 years as chair of the Department of History, where his research focused on the American West and Oklahoma. He trained a generation of history scholars, including famed author Angie Debo, and helped establish the OU Western History Collections.

Though Dale retired from OU in 1952 and died in 1972, his impact lives on through 18 books, including The Range Cattle Industry, Cow Country and Cross Timbers. 

Anne Barajas Harp is the editor of Sooner Magazine.