Today, this quaint “ghost town” includes a Phillips 66 station, an old schoolhouse, feed store, diner, town hall, jail, several homes, and more. The individual owners of the other buildings all maintain their own properties, which include private homes, stores, and museum-type exhibits.
Lowell Davis passed away at his home with his wife Rose by his side in November 2020 at the age of 83. Davis lived in the Belle Starr house, where the infamous lady outlaw grew up, as well as owning a couple of other buildings. Today, each of the buildings in Red Oak II is privately owned.
Of his re-created town, he said: “Red Oak II is a combination of a painting and a sculpture, and it is just made from things that someone else threw away.” Referred to as the “Norman Rockwell of Rural Art,” Davis has a love for the simpler times of the past that are reflected, not only in his “new” town but also in his paintings and sculptures. He began to buy homes and businesses from the original townsite and other rural ghost towns, painstakingly moving them to the new site and restoring them to their original “grandeur.”ġ920s Phillips 66 Station was originally located on Route 66 in Avilla, Missouri, by Kathy Alexander. His creative inspiration soon led him to turn his acreage into a tribute to his home town and before long Red Oak II was born. In 1987, Davis was living on a farm near Carthage that was little more than an empty cornfield. The original Red Oak, like many other rural agricultural towns across the country, started to fade sometime after World War II, when people began to move to the cities in earnest.Īfter Davis had left the area for a number of years, he returned in the 1970s to find his home town had become a ghost town. Red Oak II was actually the brainchild of artist Lowell Davis who grew up in the “real” Red Oak, Missouri, about 18 miles northwest of the “new” Red Oak II. But, it has authentic old buildings, and an old cemetery, and it looks like a ghost town. Town Hall in Red Oak, Missouri by Kathy Alexander.Ī couple of miles northeast of Carthage, Missouri and just off Route 66 is Red Oak II – a ghost town, but not really.
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