Meet Jason and Kelsey Ward, the newest owner residents in Woodland Hills Development located in Hochatown near Broken Bow Lake in McCurtain County, Oklahoma. Below Jason Ward tells the story of finding his family’s dream lot to build a vacation cabin.
Jason: Over the last 10 years, as an Oklahoma resident, we’ve been taking our kids on little adventures in Broken Bow. It didn’t take us long to
Find our favorite swimming hole, and make some new traditions, like hunting for crystals... and swimming out to islands to look for more crystals only to be picked up by the park rangers in a police boat and brought back to shore! Yet I really fell in love with the area as I got more into shooting landscape photography. Every few weeks I visit the area to shoot along Lower Mountain Fork, by the lake’s edge and on the trails.
So late in 2019, Kelsey and I decided we’d like to build a cabin in the area, both as an investment property as well as a home base for our own family adventures. Everyone we spoke to initially pointed us to Hochatown, and honestly my boys were excited about being close to the go-cart track! We even looked at a few 1+acre lots in the area. But I also ran across Woodland Hills during an online search for “Broken Bow Land For Sale.” I reached out to Scott to learn more about this new development.
As a native of Eastern Kentucky, the secluded bluffs naturally appealed to me, so on Kelsey’s birthday in December, 2019 we set out on a mission to find “OUR LOT.” First, we visited the lots in Hochatown, and were seriously considering one of them. But, I wasn’t ready to settle until I at least went out a little further to see Woodland Hills. Not only was it a beautiful drive out to the development from Highway 259, but as we entered Woodland Hills for the first time, we knew we had arrived in a special place. The elevation. The swooping hills, snaking through the trees up to a ridge with high elevation…my heart was telling me this felt like home.
I drove slowly into the development, taking in the scenery and personality of each fantastic lot. I had seen lot #9 on a Zillow post, and on Scott’s website, so I sort of knew the layout, but the pics and the plat map do little justice to actually driving through it for the first time. There really are no bad lots in Woodland Hills, but lot #7 spoke to me. Kelsey and I jumped out of the truck and took off down the lot line, following those little pink flags.
With every step, Lot 7 just felt right to us, so immediately called Scott to tell him we were interested.
If I had to identify what made this decision so easy, I’d have to say it’s much quieter than the Hochatown lots. Kelsey pointed out that if you close your eyes and just stand there, all we could hear were birds. In Hochatown we heard a few birds, but mostly we heard the road noise, and several vehicles going in and out of the massive number of cabins around us. There’s just no peace and quiet as long as Harley Davidson’s are nearby.
In Woodland Hills, you forget about the highway. Then there’s the personality of each lot. Some have nice views. Some have gorgeous streams running along them, but all of them have a gorgeous mix of hardwood and pine trees.
Scott also set the bar pretty high for the type of construction that will identify Woodland Hills, and personally the more modern, “artsy” architecture fits my style more than the rustic feel anyway. So we’re super excited to continue dreaming and planning our future cabin in Woodland Hills.
We hope to build a modern farmhouse style “cabin” with big windows…and lots of them to take in the wonderful views in Woodland Hills. We also will probably settle on a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom with a loft, so we have the perfect amount of space for our family of 5.
To anyone looking for land in the Broken Bow area, I highly suggest a visit to one of Scott’s Cabins, and a drive through the development.
There are some great lots left, but we’re so thrilled we got there when we did, as we were able to find the lot of our dreams. We look forward to being a part of the development and in meeting our future neighbors in Woodland Hills!
