Ada, Oklahoma: Frog Rock

I'm Jerri Coulson, niece of Juanita Coulson. My uncle L.B. bought land by Lighting Ridge. My family would pass the boulder that everyone now calls the Frog Rock. The boulder was never painted until Aunt Juanita painted it in 1973, to surprise her husband on the way to visit his brother.

My mother, Beulah Coulson, and Aunt Nancy Coulson, painted the rock each year after the first year as a birthday gift to Aunt Juanita (It takes three cans of spray paint to paint the Frog Rock). In 1991 my Father passed away. Mother sold the farm to the neighbor next door. About a year later Uncle Willy passed and maybe two or three years later Aunt Juanita passed.

We heard that the house across from the Frog Rock paints it now. Then we heard that the city maintains it. Sometimes we'll all go the the farm to see how the little cabin has weathered time and we stop by the Frog Rock and take a picture or two and tell the story when Aunt Juanita painted a boulder turning it into a frog.

To all the people who drive by and say, "Look, someone painted that rock like a frog," remember: it's not just a painted rock to the Coulson family. It's part of the Coulson family history.

The rock was created by local resident Juanita Coulson in the spring of 1975, as sort of a surprise/joke for her husband after seeing the rock one day and noticing its shape reminded her of a frog. She has repainted it every spring since then, except for one year when an extended hospital stay prevented her from doing so, and it has become a well-known local landmark. It is featured in Episode 077 of "Explore Ada," aired on OETA-OKLA, in which she is interviewed and tells the story herself.

This rock has been painted like a frog since my father grew up in Ada back in the 1950s (his first memories of it were that time frame). He told me he'd always remembered it painted that way and every few years someone would re-do the fading paint job. I've been going to Ada since I was a child in the 1970s and it's always been a fun site on the way out to my grandfather's farm! Don't get too distracted by the frog or you'll hit one of the turtles that park themselves on the road for warmth!

The famous "Lightning Ridge Frog Rock." I guess it resembled a frog and somebody dressed it up a little.