The Route 66 Blue Whale is living large

        Having grown up in Tulsa one-half mile from Route 66, I am somewhat familiar with the Mother Road, as it is called, and some of the quirky roadside stops along the way.
         I’ve never driven the entire road from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif. However, I have driven on sections of the road in Oklahoma and Missouri.
       The Blue Whale of Catoosa, Okla. is a beloved historic landmark and popular stop along Route 66. Catoosa is a Tulsa suburb on the northeast side of the city.
          The Blue Whale is an 80’ by 20’ concrete structure built by Hugh S. Davis, a zoologist, along with a friend, Harold Thomas, a local welder. The duo spent two years welding the metal framework and applying hand-mixed cement, one five-gallon bucket at the time, during the two year period between 1970-72.
        Sometime in the 60s, Davis and his wife, Zelta, opened Nature’s Acres. It was a Route 66 animal attraction with a replica of Noah’s Ark, alligators that roamed free and a pit of poisonous snakes that were used in sometimes life-threating wildlife shows.
         During the shows, Zelta would often wrap her body in live snakes. She was nearly killed when an alligator named Big Betty grabbed her hand and dragged her into a Nature’s Acres pond. She escaped by banging on the alligator’s nose. She saved Hugh’s life at least once by knifing open his arm and bleeding out the poison when he was bitten during a snake-milking demonstration.
          After retiring from wildlife shows, the couple decided to slow down to a more calmer and safer lifestyle.
In the late 1960s at the age of 60, Davis began to doodle pictures of a “fish” that he wanted to build at the pond. From that fish evolved a whale - larger and larger he drew from sketches on napkins to drawings on over-sized sheets of paper.
      According to info on the Blue Whale, Davis envisioned the whale as a special place where his grandchildren could play and swim in the nearby pond.
          After it was completed in July 1972, the whale, which was beached on the shore of one of Nature’s Acres old gator ponds, began attracting people who wanted to fling themselves off of it’s tail, slide down the water-coated fins and poke their heads out of the holes in the whale’s head.
     On Sept. 7, 1972, Davis officially presented the blue whale to Zelta on the couple’s 34th wedding anniversary.
        Davis kept records and the rough cost of constructing the whale was $1,783.46 in 1969 dollars. 
Zelta later recalled that Hugh had considered painting the whale black-and-white like a Killer Whale, but she vetoed the idea.
        “We don’t have mean things,” she said, and so the whale became the friendly Blue Whale.
       Hugh and Zelta viewed the project as a private whale, to be used only by their grandchildren. But its location along the Mother Road drew curious visitors, and eventually the Davises opened it as a public attraction.
        Blessings were showered upon the Davises during the time the Blue Whale was in operation. No one was ever seriously injured, no one ever sued and no one was ever bitten by a snake. It was a good time. It was a good place.
      Years passed, and by the Davis’s 50th wedding anniversary, age had caught up with the couple. The whale, despite its continued popularity, was closed to the public in 1988. Zelta posted “Trespassers Will Be Shot” signs and backed up the threat with a loaded shotgun. 
      Because of Hugh’s crippling arthritis, the Blue Whale was closed in 1988. Hugh died Jan. 11, 1990, and Zelta, died on Aug. 1, 2001. The former swimming hole became an over- grown, swampy mess. The Whale’s blue skin faded and peeled. But it was not forgotten.
      Restoration of the Blue Whale has been an ongoing effort. In 1997 the Catoosa Chamber of Commerce refurbished the fading land-mark. By the early 2000s local officials had expressed an interest in preserving the whale, and fans of the Mother Road -- partnered with the city of Catoosa for property maintenance. 
     “This hardcore group would come out here and spend days repainting and doing clean-up,” noted information on the blue whale. Hugh’s solid construction (and Zelta’s shotgun) had kept the whale standing long enough to be saved.
       At the time, then Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating himself painted the pupil of the Blue Whale’s eye. Volunteers, private companies, family members and the local Hampton Inn motel had pledged time, money and energy to maintain the site. 
        The City of Catoosa finally purchased the 14-acre property in 2020, turning it into a city park. Blue Whale Park now has picnic tables and a gift shop (where visitors can purchase turtle food for the pond’s residents).
        And in the summer of 2025, the City of Catoosa closed the Blue Whale location and broke ground on park renovations. The project is expected to be completed by May 30 this year as part of the Route 66 Centennial.
        The project includes a new visitors center with an exhibit on the Blue Whale’s history, a playground, new neon lighting, expanded parking, walkways and restrooms.
        And the exciting thing is guests can still walk around and check out the Blue Whale.
       The Blue Whale is located at 2600 US Route 66, Catoosa, Okla. 74015. Hours are Monday – Sunday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. The phone number is 918-857-0676.
        So, if you take a trip on Route 66 this summer, be sure and make a stop at the Blue Whale in Catoosa.
         Remember that Good Things are Happening, every day and always.