Assemblages and AccumulationsFrank Neatherlin (b. 1901) (1901 - 1986)

Born on Valentine’s day in 1901, Frank Neatherlin hitchhiked to Boise City, Oklahoma in 1934 where he put down roots near the business district of the small town. Neatherlin’s property gained attention after he began carefully arranging discarded “junk” in his yard. Neatherlin’s collection grew to include elk and deer antlers, old machinery parts, wagon wheels, and a wide variety of bottles and rocks fashioned into towers and trees, all connected by a brick walkway. In an interview with the Sunday Oklahoma newspaper in 1978, Neatherlin elaborated on the start of his hoard, citing an interaction from the late 1960’s while on a work trip in Montana as the impetus to his collecting.

“I picked up a round rock, and the boss said, ‘what are you going to do with that?’ I said ‘I’m going to take it home. I’m going to start collecting rocks.”

The objects in Neatherlin’s piles were sourced from junkyards found during Neatherlin’s travels across the states. The collector divided his time between Oklahoma and New Mexico, where he enjoyed trapping coyotes, claiming to have skinned 130 in one winter. 

Following Neatherlin’s death in 1986, the site was disassembled. While the physical collection no longer exists, Boise City’s “junk man” lives on in the memories of local Oklahomans.

~Nikki Ranney, 2023

Sources: 

Alvin O. Turner, “Folk Art,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=FO003.

Ed Kelley, “Ultimate Junk Man of Panhandle Finds Every Road Paved in Gold.” The Sunday Oklahoman, August 27, 1978, sec. A. 

Frank Neatherlin. Letter to Seymour Rosen. Boise City, Oklahoma, March 20, 1983. 

Nikki Ranney, Seymour Rosen

antlers, bottles, brick, tools, wagon wheels

1 folder: clippings, correspondence, images

Boise City, OK, 73933 us
Latitude/Longitude: 36.7294675 / -102.5132419

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