AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Oklahoma now has an internationally recognized dark sky park. That's an area that ensures the protection of the night sky. Black Mesa State Park is the first such area in Oklahoma. Graycen Wheeler with member station KOSU attended a dark sky event to celebrate the designation.
GRAYCEN WHEELER, BYLINE: Oklahoma is shaped like a saucepan. Black Mesa State Park & Nature Preserve is way out in the western tip of the panhandle among red dirt hills dappled with yucca plants and prickly pears. Polly Kiker has been the park director here for seven years.
POLLY KIKER: As far out as we are, you need something special to drive people here.
WHEELER: That something special used to be that Black Mesa is the highest point in Oklahoma, but it's also isolated. With expanses of scrubby rangeland and very few people, the area doesn't have much light pollution, but that hasn't always been true for the park.
KIKER: When you drove in at night, it would be super dark, and you'd come over the hill, and there was an island of light at the park because of all the street lights.
WHEELER: Kiker got the street lights turned off. Outdoor lighting at the park's buildings has been replaced with red bulbs, and visitors have guidelines about how to safely reduce their own light use. Now, it's super dark. Enough so that Black Mesa has been designated as an international dark sky park by nonprofit DarkSky International. Dozens of people came out to celebrate the milestone, including Cassidy Harris. She drove 6 hours from the Oklahoma City suburbs where the night sky doesn't reveal as much.
CASSIDY HARRIS: It's really good that people get to see the stars like this in their full beauty. I think it's really important that, at least once in a lifetime, you get to see it like that.
WHEELER: In a field nearby, Kinny Tolbert has set up his telescope to take long exposure photos of the sky. He says it's one thing to know that the universe is full of stars. It's another thing to actually see them.
KINNY TOLBERT: When they see, like, the Milky Way and they realize, I'm looking at the center of our galaxy. I'm looking at this - this is what we're all spinning around, and it's like, you know, we hear about it, but we don't see it.
WHEELER: Tolbert is glad Oklahoma has an official dark sky park.
TOLBERT: We need about a thousand more of them.
WHEELER: Well, a few more might be doable at other Oklahoma state parks now that Black Mesa has lit the way - or rather, darkened it.
For NPR News, I'm Graycen Wheeler in Kenton, Oklahoma. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.