Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainMore than 20,000 red cedar trees planted by the U.S. government in 1912, spaced exactly six feet apart across sixteen acres — a grid so disorienting that it became Lawton's most persistent urban legend, and a place where visitors report figures walking among the symmetrical rows after dark.
OK-115, Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Lawton, OK 73552
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to enter. The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service property with no admission fee.
Access
Limited Access
Open forest with unimproved ground. Even grid spacing but uneven terrain between trees; no paved paths within the forest.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1912 · 1912 U.S. government reforestation experiment in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge · 20,000+ eastern red cedar trees planted at six-foot intervals across sixteen acres · Early federal conservation science precursor to Dust Bowl erosion programs · Now among southwest Oklahoma's most visited natural curiosities
The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, established in 1901 as one of the country's first federal wildlife refuges, sits in the Wichita Mountains of southwest Oklahoma in Comanche County. In 1912, the U.S. government undertook a reforestation experiment on refuge land that would produce one of the region's most unusual landmarks.
The experiment placed more than 20,000 eastern red cedar trees in a grid pattern at exactly six-foot spacing across sixteen acres. The intent was practical: the government wanted to study how managed forest planting could control soil erosion in the granite-and-prairie landscape of the Wichita Mountains. The erosion problem that the planting was meant to address would become nationally urgent in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl, making the 1912 experiment an early data point in federal conservation science.
The cedars, planted as small seedlings, have matured over more than a century into substantial trees. The mathematical precision of the original planting has been largely preserved: the six-foot spacing remains visible as parallel rows in every direction, creating an unbroken grid that stretches to the limits of visibility within the forest. The visual effect — identical rows receding in parallel to the horizon — produces a disorientation that visitors consistently describe.
The forest is accessible off OK-115 within the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, which is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. No historical deaths within the forest have been documented in published sources; the legend of people dying in the forest is local folklore rather than a verified historical record.
Sources
The Parallel Forest's paranormal reputation draws directly from its physical character. The grid's mathematical precision produces the same sight line in every direction: rows of trees receding identically whether you face north, south, east, or west. KLAW radio, covering local news in the Lawton area, has called it 'Lawton's most famous urban legend' and documented visitor accounts going back years.
The legend holds that people have become lost in the forest and that some have died there — though no documented deaths or rescue calls within the forest appear in published sources. The claim functions as folklore, amplified by the forest's genuinely disorienting geometry. The Only in Your State feature on the forest describes visitor reports of the experience as feeling unnatural even in daylight.
The after-dark accounts are more specific: visitors describe seeing figures among the rows — human-shaped, walking between the trees — that vanish or cannot be located when the witnesses move toward them. The figures are not consistent in description; some accounts describe them as merely shadows, others as more distinctly human shapes. The accounts come from informal visitor reports rather than organized paranormal investigations.
The forest's effect is real regardless of any supernatural interpretation: the visual environment it creates is genuinely unusual, and the disorientation is documented by every visitor source.
Sixteen acres of red cedar trees planted in a mathematically precise six-foot grid by the U.S. government in 1912. Walking the rows in any direction produces an identical visual field, disorienting depth perception. Most visitors arrive in daylight; the forest's reputation is built on what visitors describe experiencing among the rows after dark.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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