In the early 1990s, Kent Ware, Sr., a highly decorated World War II veteran and respected elder of the Kiowa tribe, had a vision of creating a memorial to honor his fellow American Indian veterans at a location that would become Steele Indian School Park. The park now sits on the land that once was once home to the Phoenix Indian School, a boarding school for American Indians from around the country that operated from around 1891 until the Federal Government closed it in 1990.