Flowers for Alva, OK

Alva painted its autobiography on its own brick. More than two dozen murals ring the courthouse square, trading storefront by storefront through cattle drives, land-office lines, and college history, with the Woods County Courthouse holding the center of the frame. Flower routes here orbit that square: Oklahoma Boulevard carries US-64 past the mural walls, Northwestern Oklahoma State University runs its Ranger-red occasion economy a few minutes away — graduations, recitals, homecoming court — and Share Medical Center takes the get-well work. South of town the map opens up fast, through wheat quarters and the Cimarron breaks to Waynoka, where Little Sahara's dune traffic turns ordinary weekends into small holidays. Twelve miles the other direction is Kansas, which tells you how far northwest this corner of Oklahoma really is.

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