Some unsung heroes in our community Dear citizens of Ponca City:

I should like to put in front of you some ladies and gentlemen of your community that six days a week, formerly seven days a week, give of their time and love what they do.

These citizens of your community give two to four hours for some wonderful tours at the Marland Mansion Monday through Saturday. Some love it so much that they will give four or five, maybe six tours a month. They are presenting for you and the public they guide though the Mansion an insight in to the wonderful treasure we have here in Ponca City - the Marland legacy, Marland Mansion and Grand Home. They present not only our wonderful Mansion but also they tell you about our other wonderful sights in Ponca City. Marland’s First Home built in 1916, the GRAND HOME, Standing Bear Museum, our fantastic Gordon Matzene art collection at the library.

We all are so proud of the docents that I wanted to share with you the fact that we have attracted people from many countries and every state due to our current publicity in Southern Living and other periodicals. We have brought an experience to many from other places that had no idea before that in our “fly over state” we have such a grand treasure.

A bit of history since we started guiding at Mansion in 1976. We used to call ourselves MEGS (Marland Estate Guides) but have several men that give tours so changed it to docents of Mansion. Early on the first tour volunteers gave a whole morning or a whole afternoon to to wait for people to come to take a tour. Then we found the largest groups seemed to show up in the afternoon so we started giving guided tours at a set time. On weekends when we did Saturday AND Sunday we would give 1:30 and 3:00 tours but since COVID we have dropped our Sundays - as no longer open - and have the 1:30 tour EACH day including Saturday. The Mansion is open 10 am each day except Sunday until 5 pm for persons to go on their own but if you never have had the opportunity or the chance to visit this treasure I would invite you to enjoy a visit.

If you know personally any of our docents I hope you will thank them for what they do. They are our unsung heroes that you might know personally. They present a wonderful view of our community and welcome people each day and ask them to come back and bring family and friends which our guests often do.

Virginia Starks Docent since 1977