OK River A Big Draw For OKC
River Attraction: Oklahoma River is becoming a big draw for Oklahoma City
By Steve Lackmeyer
It’s more a happy accident of design rather than intentional civic promotion that has thousands of cross-country travelers wondering about the “amusement park” they see rising up along the Oklahoma River.
The sight of dozens of kids crawling all over the 80-foot-high SandRidge Sky Trail alone is proving to be a draw for some of the 111,500 motorists who travel the new highway daily. Mike Knopp, director of the Oklahoma Boathouse Foundation, can only imagine what the response might be once the master plan for the area is fully realized over the next few years.
“People see the Sky Trail, and they come here thinking it is an amusement park,” Knopp said. “And in some ways, you can say it is. We like to call it an adventure park.”
The draw of just the Sky Trail alone — a structure that includes an elaborate ropes course, the largest in America, the country’s largest slide (80 feet), the 80-foot “Rumble” bungee jump and zip lines that soon will glide across the river, already is drawing families and groups driving from Dallas, Amarillo and Wichita who are traveling to Oklahoma City.