A Very OK Podcast

Blackburn: Well, and Trait, I've worked with both of these individuals before. Chantry, when he was director of Preservation Oklahoma, which is a very important support group for the Oklahoma Historical Society, because we're, we're limited in our advocacy, in getting out there and getting in groups. And POK has done a great job. I started with Ralph McCalmont, Susan Guthrie years ago. I remember Melvena and I sitting in the Journal Record building before the bombing. So this goes back early 1990s getting that started. And, and you came in what, about ten years ago I would guess?

Banks: Uh, let's see, about six years ago. Six or seven years ago, yeah.

Blackburn: But you kind of get, really brought it together with some professionalism and, and, did real well around the state. And then of course, worked with Nicole when I was with the Oklahoma Historical Society. She came in as my executive assistant and soon expanded her duties to a little bit of everything. So she was kind of our our utility infielder, put it that way. It is a baseball metaphor this time of year.

Harvey: You used to call me Radar O’Reilly, and I didn't know what that meant.

Blackburn: Oh, yeah, wrong generation. But they, Nicole would guess what I needed and knew what I need before I actually said it, so that used to freak me out.

Thompson: Nicole, how long have you been with the OHS?

Harvey: Oh, I think 13 years. So I was Bob's assistant from 2012, and then basically till he retired, and then I took on the grant program.

Thompson: Yeah. And director of Strategic Initiatives.

Harvey: Yep, director of Strategic Initiatives. And now, in my current role as director of the Oklahoma History Center Museum.

Thompson: And, I don't know, she didn't really raise her hand for that job, but I kind of thrust her into it. And she's done a wonderful job.

Harvey: Thank you.

Thompson: So yeah, we're very excited to have you in that role. But let's get into talking about some of these interesting topics. And when I was preparing for this, it reminded me of a great scene from... We like to talk about pop culture every now and then on this podcast... and it reminded me of a great scene from Wayne's World. And in that scene, Wayne and Garth go backstage to meet Alice Cooper, and they ask Alice Cooper, do you come to Milwaukee often? And he sits down on the couch and he proceeds to give them a lecture and says, well, yes, but I'm not the only one who's come to Milwaukee often. French fur traders and missionaries have been coming here since the 1600s. And then somebody pipes in from the background and says, well, isn't Milwaukee an Indian word? And he says, thank you for asking me that. Yes. It comes from the Algonquin word, Milwaukee, which means “The Good Land.” And Wayne says, “Does this guy know how to party or what?”

(laughter)

Thompson: So, so we're not the first ones to jump on the bandwagon of figuring out where some of these great place names came from. And, Nicole, you've got some interesting icebreaker facts about names, don't you?

Harvey: I do. So I knew that there was a Blackburn, Oklahoma, and I started thinking, all right, is there a a town name for each of the podcasters that will be present? So I did a little bit of her of a dive, and I found that of course, we have Blackburn, which was named for a Kentucky Senator Joseph C. S. Blackburn, and it was incorporated in 1909. And then we have Thompsonville, which is a rural community in Creek County that was platted in 1922, named for J. W. Thompson. And then we have a defunct town called Harvey, which is in Lincoln County, that doesn't exist anymore; had a post office from 1891 to 1900. And it was named after Judge W. L. Harvey. And then I am so sorry, Chantry Banks. I was not able to, I thought Banks would be a, for sure community, but, yeah, but I could not find one. At least I didn't see one in in our handy, George Shirk’s Oklahoma Place Names book. But I did find two things that were somewhat close. I had, I don't know if it's pronounced Chaney or Chann-ee in Ellis County, which is defunct. And then Chant, which is in, was in Haskell County, and it's also defunct. So you and I are defunct.

Blackburn: But Nicole, if you feel short changed with places, you should know that there are many Harvey Houses in Oklahoma that we still have are still standing and going back to the days of Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls. You're one of those. And there's a street going through Oklahoma City, called, you know, Harvey.

Banks: Oh, yeah, that's right. And the Chaney which is, was in Ellis County, Chaney, Chaney, whichever it is, you know, it's it's the first letter of six local families. I just looked this up. This was the Carey, Hull, Adams, Nichols, Edmonds, and Yarnold families that created that name of Chaney in Ellis County.

Thompson: See, friends, we know how to party too. (laughter)

Thompson: Well, Bob, why don't you tell us a little bit about some of where some of the naming comes from and the background and some of that, and set the scene for us?

Blackburn: Well, partly because Oklahoma is such a young state and had such a long frontier era, we've had a variety of ways that names have been applied to a geographical place, to a town, to a crossroads or whatever it might be. Really starts with American Indians. Of course, American Indians have been here at least 20,000 years. Some archaeologists think 30,000, who knows, but at least 20. And they had names for places because generally they were nomadic. They were hunters and gatherers. They needed to remember where you could find the best stuff together, where to get the best hunting, where to get fresh water. And so they would refer to places. And so American Indians had their own names, generally in their own language, that often was corrupted because the next group that would come in and, and use their names and sometimes amend them ,would have been the French. And the French really started coming in to the territory after 1716, 1720. And of course, the what, what they're coming for is not land and not even gold, as the Spanish had been, but they're coming to trade. And the way that they would work their way into the frontier was on rivers and up a creek, and so they wanted to name the rivers. So they would ask the Indians, what's the name of this river? We'll meet you here next spring. We'll get your furs, and we'll bring you trade goods. And it was commerce, and their motivation was to find American Indians willing to trade. So most of the major rivers in Oklahoma have French names. So you have River Rouge, the Red River, what the Indians called it. Because the water comes through the red beds of the High Plains, and it is red and salty by the time it gets here. But you also have the Canadian River, and then the North Canadian that flows through Oklahoma City. The Cimarron, the Poteau River, the Arkansas, and the Kiamichi. It goes on and on with the French names because they needed to know where to meet the Indians the next year. And so the French named a lot of our places. And then the US Army would come in after 1803, as Indians were removed out of the old, the colonial part of the country, and they were moved west. Military would say, hey, you've got to go out and keep the peace. You got to make peace among the Indians. Let's create safety so we can trade again. Motivation is to make money. And as the army came, largely, they were naming their military facilities after other military men. And so you get Fort Gibson, named after an officer, Fort Towson, Fort Sill, Fort Reno, these are all names. One exception, would have been Camp Supply, which was Armstrong Custer's place where he was going to have supplies after his winter campaign in 1868.

Thompson: They weren't too creative on that one.

Blackburn: They weren’t too creative, no. And of course, we have the town still of Fort Supply today. But, the army did a lot. And then the Five Tribes as they came, and they named a lot of places because it was their land. They had the title to it. You a lot of times we think of all of Oklahoma was a reservation where the federal government said, hey, you use it for a while, we'll take it back any time we want. Well, the Five Tribes actually bought their land and had a title, and so they were naming their own towns. And when you expand to other tribes, like the Osage, they were naming their facilities based on their, their divisions. There were three big divisions of the Osage Nation by the time they come to Oklahoma in 1871. And so they're using names associated with their own clans and bands and applying that to, So you get a Fairfax, and you get a Hominy, you get a Pawhuska named for White Hair, is the way you actually said White Hair in the Osage language, Pawhuska. And so those are those names are coming down to us from the Indians. And then Wichita Mountains is a good example. The Wichita were encountered by Dragoon Expedition, and they were camped in the Wichita Mountains. And so it became the Wichita Mountains. Yeah, it could have been the Kiowa Mountains. Could have been Comanche Mountains, but the Wichita were there when artists were coming in, it became a popular place. And then after that, you really get the railroads would be the next big organization that had motivation to name it, because they want to make money. Typically railroads were making money in the American West by selling land. Well, in Oklahoma, they didn't get a lot of land. It was one of the few Western states where railroads that would go in early would get land on either side of the railroad, then sell it, make a lot of money to immigrants, establish towns. Well, here they didn't have all of that land. So they tried to have town sites. They were more motivated. So town sites like Edmond and Guthrie and Oklahoma City and Norman would all have been named by the railroads. Perry. It goes on and on. They were located on these on the railroad tracks, and the railroads were trying to make money out of it. Then after that, you get a wave of settlers who come in, and the settlers create a community because there's enough good farmland in a watershed area where once you get enough farmers to produce something, then you need a blacksmith, and you need a schoolteacher. Then you need a post office. And so those settlers would name their towns. And so a lot of those towns are named after a local person who might have been the first settler. It could have been an important person or somebody that, like Vinita, even though that’s an Indian name, for Vinnie Ream, who was an actress on the on the stage at the time, because some Cherokees really admired her. So the Vinita name came from her. But local settlers, people developing, and then we get the a big wave of naming, especially counties are all named by the Constitutional Convention in 1906 and 1907. In fact, there was more time at the Constitutional Convention spent on counties, where the county seats would be, because this was going to be a big economic mover in, in the new state, And so naming them. So Rogers County, a lot of people think it's Will Rogers. It is actually his dad, Clem Rogers, who was one of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: So a lot of them had things named for them. Alfalfa Bill Murray, you know, had two. Alfalfa County and Murray County. So, they had a good time in naming. And then really last would be developers. And this is more common, here in Oklahoma City, Nichols Hills, G. A. Nichols, Doc Nichols, who put 2,000 acres under contract, developed, brought in architects from Kansas City, created this entire new community with some retail, largely residential. And so developers have done a lot with names in the 20th century. And so really, it's through all of these means. And then there are little things in between, like post offices, and Nicole will talk about that. You know, sometimes there would be no name. And they wanted deliverables. They just put a name on a place. And names have changed over the years. So they've changed because of, you know, the German hysteria of World War I. When you get towns like Berlin wanting to change their name because they thought that would draw, and there were some Germans, you know, lynched and tarred and feathered, and a lot of the Ku Klux Klan effort of the 1920s came out of the anti-German and, being against foreigners. But, so our names have evolved for a variety of reasons, but that's kind of the big picture. And then within that fits these other stories that we'll, we'll get into some detail here.

Thompson: Well, let's jump into it. Nicole, since Bob mentioned post offices and you've done some, some research into postmasters and post offices, why don't you start us off?

Harvey: Well, yeah. So I was, flipping through George Shirk’s book here that has all of these Oklahoma place names, and as Dr. Blackburn was mentioning, and a lot of these, these communities are named after important people or postmasters. And they start noticing that I'm seeing a lot of names like Sophia or, you know, Elizabeth, or Anna or whatever last name, and then postmaster. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm guessing that these are post mistresses. And so I start looking and doing a little bit of a dive, and I find out that actually, 10% of the postmasters in the United States in about 1890 were women. And, I don't know why that surprised me. I don't know that it should, but I just did a little bit of a research into it, and apparently the US Postal Service was one of the first branches of federal government that was giving jobs to women. It was seen as somewhat socially acceptable because it was seen as a something you could do from your house or your, your husband's store. And it was seen as like a clerical or domestic type position. It was also a lot of times a political appointee. And so you have these, these women in, in our communities being postmasters. And then they're getting to name the town after, after them when they fill out that, that form and send it over to the, to the post office. So, to the, to the officials in Washington, DC.

Thompson: Did you find some examples of that?

Harvey: I did, I did, back up your work, Nicole. Here we go. So I feel like we're in math class for a second.

Thompson: We're not just going to take your word for it.

Harvey: Well, you should. So, Weatherford. I don't know if it was named for the husband or the wife. But it the first postmaster was a Lorinda Weatherford. And then we've got a couple of defunct towns. But we've got Snyder, which was named after Margaret Snyder, who was the first postmaster. It was later changed to Nagle. And then we have Whiting, who was Ida Whiting. And then there was another town, Sophia, and a couple of them were defunct. But obviously towns like Weatherford still exist today.

Thompson: Yeah.

Harvey: And I was just really struck by by the power of the post office and making these, these names. You know, if a town submitted for a post office and they left it blank, it was at the discretion of the, you know, the offices in Washington to to give a name or if there was a duplicate name or there's some reason why that name shouldn't be taken in, they could just make it a change. And in the book, it actually notes that the gentleman, the Captain Tully, who was who was, in this post at the time, in the 1880s and for about three decades after that part, a lot of towns across the United States are named after his family members or after his neighborhood, you know, kids in the neighborhood, just because they had to think of names for some of these communities.

Thompson: Chantry, you are our resident western Oklahoma, guy here at the OHS. And, you are from the bustling metropolis of Hammon, Oklahoma.

Banks: That is correct.

Thompson: And then you researched some western Oklahoma. And what do you have for us?

Banks: Well, just to piggyback on postmaster names, the town or the it's not even a town, it's a community, of Retrop was named by, for the postmaster Ira J. Porter. And so the legend growing up, or what I was told growing up, was that they changed it to Retrop, which is just Porter backwards, because the town of Porter already existed in Oklahoma. I don't know if that's true or if he was just being clever when he named, named the, named his little community of Retrop, but it is there in Washita County, not far from, oh it’s on your drive between Elk City and Granite, which are two other interesting towns in western Oklahoma. Granite being the most, I think, maybe one of the most obvious named communities in the entire state of Oklahoma because it sits right at the foot of a giant granite hill, a mountain, Headquarters Mountain there in a Greer County, there in the in the beginnings of the Wichita Mountains and, Elk City, which is the largest community in Beckham County, was originally called Busch, when it was. Well, it went by a couple of different names before statehood when it became Elk City. But it is named after Elk Creek now, which is there the source of Elk Creek is right there in Elk City. And, Captain Randolph Marcy is the one who named Elk Creek there because he saw elk tracks in the creek. But there in good old Hammon, Oklahoma, my favorite place in the entire world, which sits at the, sits at where Custer County and Roger Mills County meet, Hammon is named after, not the postmaster or postmistress, but a gentleman named. excuse me, James Hammon. He was an agent for the Red Moon Agency, which was a sub agency of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Agency, which was headquartered at Darlington. So, Hammon exists because of the Red Moon Agency. Once they started building the, and the Red Moon Agency, Mr. Hammon was sent out there. He was a farmer. He was sent out there to, to teach the Cheyenne-Arapaho children how to farm. And so, Red Moon School was also based there. And my, the farm I grew up on was just a couple of miles from the Red Moon Agency. And so, settlers saw the opportunity to begin settling around the Red Moon Agency around the school there for trade. And that's how Hammon came to be. And Mr. Hammon's wife, Ida, was the first postmaster there at Hammon. And, so Roger Mills County, also, it was named after, Roger Q. Mills, who was a Confederate officer in the Civil War and later a Texas senator. Its county seat is Cheyenne, obviously named for the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes that that called that part of the country, that part of the state home. And then right next door is Custer County, which was named for General George Armstrong Custer with its county seat of Arapaho.

Blackburn: Whenever you talk about Hammon, I can't help but think of one of my heroes in Oklahoma history of all time. When I wrote the centennial book of the state in 2007, I ended the book with this story of Lawrence Hart, whose grandparents would have settled in that Red Moon community, some of the more conservative of all the Cheyenne, in the Cheyenne Nation, stayed that far west. They didn't want to be near Darlington. They wanted to be, you know, farther away from the corruption, that, you know, white society and, but Lawrence Hart would have gone to Red Moon and became a peace chief there.

Banks: Yep, yep. Same with White Shield Creek, which runs there through the town of, through the town of Hammon, named after, Chief White Shield as well.

Thompson: Well, and since you mentioned, towns that, their names are pretty obvious why they were named that because of towns like Granite. Reminds me of the town of Marble City in eastern Oklahoma, and it's because there's a giant marble quarry right there.

Harvey: Cement, Oklahoma.

Banks: Right. Sulphur? Yes.

Thompson: So sometimes you don't have to really kind of stretch the imagination to name a town. You just look at what's around you and say, well, this is the name.

Banks: Yeah. (laughter)

Thompson: I wanted to talk about the, there are, the name Noble pops up several times in the former Unassigned Lands, which became Oklahoma Territory. There's the city of Noble, there is Noble County, and on in several towns you also see a Noble Street. And so why did this name pop up so often? Well, as it turns out, these, this town, county streets, they were named for the Secretary of the Interior, John W. Noble, who served under President Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to, I'm sorry, 1889 to 1893. I wrote 1983 in my notes, and that is not right. He would have served in there a long, long time. But he was born in 1831, in Lancaster, Ohio. He ended up graduating from Yale in 1851, and he was admitted to the bar in Ohio in 1853, moved to St. Louis, and then during the Civil War, he served in the third Iowa Cavalry, was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and then became the Judge Advocate General of the Army of the Southwest. He ended his service in the war as a brigadier general. He went back to Missouri, where he was appointed the US District Attorney for the Eastern District. In 1867, and he was tapped to be the Secretary of the Interior by President Harrison. Now, why do we see so many, towns and things named for Noble? Well, the land runs, and the assignment of lands during that time, from 1889 to 1893, it was the Interior Department who oversaw all of the nitty gritty details of making that happen. So the Interior Department was responsible for setting the rules and regulations for the land run, including the dates, the geographical areas, any procedures for claiming land. And they were also to establish the location of the land offices. I read a funny story in The Chronicles as I was doing my research on this. He really didn't have much information on the topography of Oklahoma. So the first place that he chose to be the location of the Kingfisher Land Office was actually in a ravine. He ended up having to move it around a little bit. He would also settle legal disputes for land claims. So in today's day and age, when we talk about the Secretary of the Interior, we mostly see someone, of course, who's in charge of a massive department, and the national parks, and the Indian Affairs. But they are in a lot of ways a figurehead. They don't do a lot of the nitty gritty work. Well, back in these days, he would have been a very involved in all of the affairs to the point of actually settling land disputes, too. And I found this case of a man named Ransom Payne, who was a deputy marshal in the Unassigned Lands. And at the moment the gun goes off at noon on April the 22, 1889, he just goes a little bit north of Guthrie, and he claims his 160-acre plot of land. And of course, another person who who fairly participated in a land run, claimed that same spot of land. And the big dispute was, well, he was here before, you know, he wasn't technically a sooner because he was in the Unassigned Lands legally, but he had an advantage. And this was a case that, ultimately came to Noble. And he wrote, “Parties who occupied positions similar to that occupied by Payne had abundant opportunity to qualify themselves as claimants by withdrawing from the territory and placing themselves on par with others, had they so desired. This, Payne declined to do but sought to take advantage of his position to anticipate the arrival of any other claimants from the point they had occupied in obedience of the law.” So basically what Noble is saying here is he had an unfair advantage. Well, this works its way all the way up to the US Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court in 1898 ultimately sides with Noble and his interpretation of law, and Payne was forced to give up his claims. But at one point it was estimated as many as one-third of the claimants during the 1889 Land Run were probably fraudulent by sooners and people who took advantage, and it was a giant mess, to say the least, Bob. And, but this is the, this is the kind of, work he was deeply involved in. All of the details of the land runs, and the land lotteries, for all of that time during his tenure as Secretary of the Interior, in 1902, at the 13th anniversary of the land run, he gave a keynote address here in Oklahoma. And he said, “On the 22nd day of April, 1889, at noon that day on time, the bugle and the cannon sounded forward, Oklahoma, and the echoes are yet in our soul. And today we have come to celebrate it, because it has proved to be one of the signal events for good in American history.” I think that that, you know, people might disagree with that today. Of course, we, we look at history with a little bit more nuance, too, but Noble, what came back, many times to Oklahoma. He also supported the statehood for Oklahoma Territory and would come back and speak at those events and conventions as well. So that's who, these places named Noble are named for John W. Noble. And he ended up, he died in St. Louis in 1912.

Blackburn: Well, we’re talking about the land run. But the town comes to my mind on the southern edge of the Unassigned Lands, the little town of Purcell. Yes. And a lot of people don't think much about, you know, what happened to Purcell. But Robert Jeremiah Love was a Chickasaw who was orphaned during the Civil War, and both of his parents were killed during the war. He survived, became a cowboy. By 1870s, he had a couple of horses. And a small herd of cattle, but just getting by largely in the western part of the Chickasaw Nation. But then he became friends with cattlemen out of north Texas and Gainesville. And when the Santa Fe Railroad started building through in 1885, he was selling beef to the construction crews. And of course, those guys need about 8,000 calories a day. Well, on the railroad. So he was getting beef. He was getting beef from other Chickasaws, doing real well. Well he became so ingrained with the Santa Fe people that he found out where the North crew and the South crew were going to meet somewhere in the middle, kind of like driving the golden spike on the transcontinental railroad. He found out it was going to be just south of the South Canadian River in the Unassigned Lands. And so he went forward and as a Chickasaw could claim a townsite and named it Purcell. And so, didn't do real well at first, because not many people wanted to live that far on the frontier. But when he made it, Land Run of 1889, because it became the southern port for everything coming into the Unassigned Lands and everything going out towards the south. And until the Frisco Railroad was built in 1897, almost all of our commerce went south. So all of our cotton was going to Galveston and Houston. Everything went down river largely to New Orleans. So that southern route and having Purcell and then some people might, especially from central Oklahoma, would know that there was a famous merchant who started his business in Purcell in 1892, B. C. Clark.

Thompson: Yeah, I was going to mention that you beat me to it.

Blackburn: I beat you to it. But anyway, little town of Purcell has that interesting history behind it, and Robert Jeremiah Love's great-grandson would start his own string of businesses in 1963 and 1964. And that was Tom Love, Love’s Country Stores and Travel Stops. So, that one family has had a lot to do with with changing place names around the state.

Thompson: Yeah. Without B. C. Clark, we wouldn’t know when Christmas starts.

Harvey: So say Chantry and I will come back in December and do a rendition for you.

Banks: And the first Love’s was in Watonga, is that correct?

Blackburn: Exactly. Yep.

Banks: Which also was home at one time to a restaurant called the Noble House.

Thompson: So there we go.

Banks: The best cheese soup you'll ever have.

Thompson: There we go. And with that, we're going to take a quick break.

Announcer: Got a sweet tooth and a love for history? Then mark your calendars for the Cinnamon Roll Social at Fort Towson Historic Site on Saturday, September 27 from 10 a.m. to noon. Enjoy fresh hot cinnamon rolls straight from a Dutch oven. While you snack, wander through the museum and stroll the fort’s scenic grounds, where soldiers once lived, worked, and built their community. It's free, it's fun, and it's a chance to connect with neighbors, community leaders and the Oklahoma Historical Society team. Don't miss this cozy mix of history, conversation, and of course, cinnamon rolls. So grab your friends and step into history with the side of sugar. The Cinnamon Roll Social, September 27 at Fort Towson.

Thompson: And we're back. Okay. Nicole, you've got some funny names in Oklahoma you want to talk to us about.

Blackburn: She's a funny girl.

Harvey: Well, I am. Just call me Barbra. You get it? You get it, Chantry?

Banks: Of course.

Harvey: Barbra Streisand. Yeah.

Banks: Not Barbara. Barbra. Yeah.

Harvey: Okay. So, I think a lot of people have heard of this one. Or maybe not, I don't know, but Slapout in Beaver County, which apparently I don't know if this is true or not, but the legend says that the storekeeper was always “slap out” of whatever it is that you needed, from his store. And so the name stuck.

Thompson: Well, as we know from the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. So we'll we'll go with that.

Banks: And that's all I've ever heard. That's the only.

Harvey: That's the one.

Banks: Yes. That's the only explanation I've ever heard.

Harvey: You’ve also got Frogville, which is somewhat self-explanatory, but apparently it has swarms of, which I've never heard the term swarms of frogs, but that's what my notes say. Swarms of frogs, and this is in quotes here, “So large they ate young ducks.”

Thompson: Wow. That's straight out Genesis.

Harvey: That is a real big frog. (laughter) This one's not funny. This one's just kind of cute. The town of Henryetta was named after a couple named Henry Beard and his wife, Etta Ray Beard. So you take Henry and Etta, and make Henryetta. That was kind of sweet. We have, this is, It's October now, or we're coming into October, I should say, Pumpkin Center. But I don't know anything about it other than it's called Pumpkin Center. And it sounded fall-esque and sounded fun to me. There’s also like a, oh, I can't remember if it's Cookieville or Cookietown, but there's a, there's a cookie something. We had a really great post on our social media for the agency in which it kind of was using, like all the terms of all the different places we've got in our state that would make up a meal and then, you know, get “Foyil” to wrap your leftovers. I mean, just kind of cute little puns, and that was one of the ones that was listed. Pumpkin Center was on that. And then last we've got Antlers and this is again, not funny, but it's just, antlers apparently were just nailed to a tree to mark a stream crossing. And, that was what the name took, the town took its name after and again, a postmistress. Ella Colbert was the first postmaster there.

Thompson: Very nice, very nice. Bob, you have any other names you want to talk to us about?

Blackburn: Yeah. I wanted to mention that within cities, you have place names. People know, you know, a certain part of town by a name and two examples would be one in Tulsa. And the Arkansas River, of course, flows through Tulsa, everyone knows. Well in the 1970s, the idea is create some low water dams and create more of a lake. And then around the lake will have trails, and then we'll have statuary. And lots of things were happening in Tulsa. And it it really helped Tulsa's economic development downtown, along the Riverwalk was what we still call it. But the name given to the lake was Zink Lake, Z-I-N-K. And it was not from the, you know, the mineral zinc, but it was from, Jack and John Zink. John Zink had studied mechanical engineering at OU. Worked for Oklahoma Natural Gas 1931. Went out on his own, started developing new kinds of burners and floor furnaces and different apparatus for industrials, and then along comes Jack, his son, after World War II expands that into an international company. And between Jack and John, there were two different foundations that put up the initial money to come in with the low water dams. And so you get Zink Lake.

Thompson: Okay.

Blackburn: And here in Oklahoma City, a good example is that the old industrial section of town on the on the northeast side of town, which would have been east of the Santa Fe tracks, south of the Frisco and Rock Island tracks, and north of the river, which cut through. So it created a triangle that was an industrial district. No one wanted to have homes there, if they could help it, and it became an area with two and three, sometimes four story brick buildings. Well, fast forward to World War II and coming out of World War II with industrial districts and and trucks that couldn't get into these old industrial parts of Oklahoma City, as well as Tulsa. And so you get this. The industrial districts will, companies start leaving that area of Oklahoma City, and it becomes kind of a wasteland with literally grass. Growing up, I took a photograph in 1978, in this part of Oklahoma City, and grass was literally grown up between the brick. There was not enough cars to keep the grass from growing in the bricks. And so literally, it was grass growing up in the bricks. Well, a developer who got interested in in historic preservation very early, Neil Horton, who had developed the oil and gas building right by the First National Bank building today, he got excited about historic preservation in the 1970s when it was a big, big deal, really, starting with Congress in 1966 and coming to Oklahoma. Well, Neil Horton looked at that. He said, this looks like an asset to me, and maybe it's something that I can develop. So he put together a, a development company, hired a young architect named Don Beck who would later design the Oklahoma History Center, hired a young PhD student from OSU who is willing to scramble and work named Bob Blackburn.

Thompson: Who’s that guy? (laughter)

Blackburn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harvey: What ever came of him?

Blackburn: Put 10 buildings on the National Register. Don put together a concept and they called it Bricktown. Well, Bricktown didn't come from the City Council saying it's going to be Bricktown. It didn't come from it, but it came from this developer who had this idea. And just like Zink Lake in Tulsa, Bricktown here you get different names applied to geographical areas that we know today. And so I think those are two urban stories that kind of you can trace back to individuals making decisions.

Thompson: Fascinating, fascinating. Chantry, I was wondering, you had mentioned, when we were getting prepared for this, you did a little research on the name behind the Washita River.

Banks: Yeah.

Thompson: And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about the Washita River. I would love to. I grew up on a big bend in the Washita River at the confluence of Quartermaster Creek and the Washita River. Washita is, so it’s W-A-S-H-I-T-A is the Europe, well, not even the European, it's not the French, it's the English pronunciation or spelling of two Choctaw words: Owa Chito, which means big hunt. And so we have two separate spellings of Washita in the state of Oklahoma. Of course, the Ouachita National Forest, the mountains in southeast Oklahoma. But then the Washita River, which begins in the Texas Panhandle and, is a tributary of the Red River and runs its way down, through northwest Oklahoma, central-western Oklahoma, into central Oklahoma and dumps there into the Lake Texoma now. But there were, where I grew up, on the Washita with Quartermaster, with the Quartermaster Creek was named for James Bell, who was a quartermaster for Custer at the battle or massacre of the Washita in 1868. It was this area where these two bodies of water meet was the short-lived home of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Cattle Company. Just lasted a few years. It was I believe a million-acre cattle operation and a beautiful Oklahoma Historical Society marker marks that there on the highway, just south of the, of that area. But the, the Washita where I grew up. So as you're driving down I-35, you you drive over the Washita a couple of different times, and it looks like a beautiful big, well hydrated river, a very nicely flowing river. But up where I am, sometimes there's no water in at all. The last time I drove over the bridge that I grew up, playing under, dangerously, there was not a drop of water in the river, but that's changed in the last, this very wet and mild year that we've had. So, yeah, that's the, that's what I've learned about the about the Washita, of course, Battle of the Washita happened there on the Washita River just west of Cheyenne, Oklahoma.

Thompson: It is really interesting because if you go to that, that site of where that massacre took place and, and just a little plug, we did a podcast about that, battle or massacre of the Washita a couple of years ago. So you can go and listen to that, but you can almost jump over the river right there. It's not very wide.

Banks: We'd call it a “crick” or a creek, right there, where there at Cheyenne. And especially even just a little further north and west. One of my favorite places to visit is the Metcalfe Museum and Break O’Day Farm there near Durham, Oklahoma. And it's barely a, it's barely, you could spit in it and get quite a bit of water to the to the flow of it, of it right there. So as it I mean, it's it's it is a major tributary of the of the, of the Red River. Just picks up a lot of springs and creeks on its journey.

Thompson: Yeah, we did our podcast over the 1834 Dodge Leavenworth Expedition a couple of episodes ago. And, you know, one of the places they camped was where the Washita meets the Red River as they're working their way to go west to the Wichita Mountains. And, I got on a little lark and I pulled up Google Maps, and then I just started. I zoomed in and I just started tracing the Washita. First of all, it is not a straight river at all. Yeah, it twists and curves and bends, but I traced it. I mean, it covers a lot of territory in Oklahoma. And you're exactly right. When you're driving west on I-40, you're driving west on any of the major towns. You'll cross the Washita several times, and you just think to yourself, like, where does this river go? (laughter)

Thompson: And and, just like you said, there are places where it's not very wide, and then there are places where it's, you know, good, wide, and it's flowing really well.

Banks: Right. And it has those beautiful at some, very steep red cliffs, that, that make up the banks of, of the Washita, to the, to the fact that, my grandparents really believed that there on the farm, there's a huge bluff that falls right into the Washita. And they had found a few bison remnants at this site. So they believe they had a, we had a, bison kill site there on the Washita there in Custer County. And, I love, I could talk about the Washita all day, but it's also was just so notoriously known for flooding, almost every spring, to the fact to the point that the Upper Washita Conservation District was one of the first conservation districts created in the country to create a series of ponds and dams to help with flood control there, and in Roger Mills and Custer County.

Blackburn: Because of the flooding, some of the best farmland in the state is around the Pauls Valley, Chickasha, you just if you meander up the Washita River, you're going to see some of the richest farmland in Oklahoma.

Banks: And I have spent many an hour following like you, Google Maps, just it just, follow that route of the river because there are several little oxbow lakes that have been created over the decades for that river.

Thompson: Nobody can tell us we don't know how to have a good time, Chantry. (laughter)

Thompson: Well, I want to take us to the opposite end of the state, in the far southeastern corner of Oklahoma in McCurtain County, and I want to talk about Beavers Bend State Park. And when you're when I was doing research online, most of the sources that I looked at about Beavers Bend State Park said it was named for John T. Beavers or, you'll see him referred to as Johnny Beavers, a Choctaw citizen who married Lavina Hudson Beavers, who was a fullblood Choctaw, and her father had also been chief of the Choctaw Nation. And in 1930, the land that they lived on in southeast Oklahoma, it was sold to the Choctaw Lumber Company. And then, that company ended up selling it to local community leaders. And it became, ultimately ended up becoming one of Oklahoma's original state parks, also a podcast episode that we've done here, Beavers Bend State Park. And what's interesting about this, and I called our resident McCurtain County historian, actually, I, I didn't call, I texted him because I've started seeing some information that maybe Beavers Bend wasn’t named for Johnny Beavers in the Beavers family. Maybe it was actually named because there were beavers there. And so I texted Kenny Sivard, our board member who knows everything there is to know about Choctaw, about southeastern Oklahoma, and in particular, McCurtain County.

And, I said, hey, can you give me the the straight scoop on this? And he said, yeah. He said, John's wife, Lavina, gave an interview to the WPA in 1938, and she said that it was called Beavers Bend long before Johnny Beavers. Johnny Beavers was born in Alabama and made his way into the Choctaw Nation in the 1890s. And she said it was called that long before because there was actually, before it was all trapped out, there were a lot of beavers in that area. And, she did an interview in the Indian Pioneer Papers that we have here in our collection at the Oklahoma Historical Society. So this morning I asked Chad Williams if he could help me pull that up. And and I actually read her interview, and in it, she said, “Indians call this place Bokfolta in Choctaw, which is ‘winding around river’ in English; but white people call it Beavers Bend because there were many beaver in this river in those early days.” And so she kind of sets the record straight that it was called Beavers Bend before, before Johnny Beavers got there. Now, I did also look on The Gateway to Oklahoma History and, and, looked up John Beavers name just to see if there were any mentions of him in the newspaper. And boy am I glad I did, because I found a couple of great quotes about John Beavers in the newspapers. So, Idabel’s Democrat-Record newspaper on November 9, 1911, notes that “John T. Beavers was here from Eagletown Monday. John says that while he had killed every kind of animal in the woods, he likes to look at the big cats that grow in other countries. He claims, and can no doubt verify the claim...” which I would, I would really love to see how you do that. “He claims that he has killed more deer than any man in Oklahoma or Arkansas.” So, interesting. And then in February 7, 1912, the McCurtain County Gazette announced John Beavers’ run for county commissioner. And in the quote it said, “John Beavers is perhaps one of the most widely known men in the county, having a hunting record from Maine to Mexico. He intends to make you a commissioner, of which you will dream about in the after years.” And he says he knows the needs of McCurtain County and will, quote, “take no monkey business if he is commissioner.” So, he looks like he was a man who was not to be trifled with. And you probably, he could probably have many different ways to kill you if you wanted to.

Banks: But did he win?

Thompson: I suspect not because he was running as a Republican and, they, and he was probably the only Republican in McCurtain County in 1912. He ended up dying in 1936 at the age of 86. But his wife, Lavina, lived on until 1955. So despite what you find online, it seems that Beavers Bend State Park is really named for the, at one time, abundance of beavers. I'm sure that has a lot of, I don't think they trap it anymore. So maybe the beaver population has come back. So, I thought that was pretty interesting. Nicole, what do you got for us? What's some other fun and interesting things you have for us?

Harvey: So, I thought there, I noticed there were some repeat names, and by repeat names, I mean names from other states or other places in the world that found their way to Oklahoma. One of the most obvious examples that a lot of us will know is, Prague, Oklahoma. And, you know, I, I struggle when I am talking about Prague to properly pronounce it now, just like Miami, Florida. You want to say, you know, “Miam-uh.” But yeah.

Thompson: Prague. (laughter)

Thompson: She twisted her tie again.

Harvey: Prague, Oklahoma, was named after Prague at the time, Czechoslovakia. And we've got two Muscogee (Creek) names of Eufaula and not quite Tulsa, but, it was a Creek or Muscogee word called Tallasi I think is, maybe I'm pronouncing that correctly. And it was, mean old town. And these were two locations in Alabama. And Eufaula, the book I was reading actually didn't go into this detail, but I did a little bit of research and saw that Eufaula was the tribe that was under the Muscogee (Creek) Confederation. And of course, these names came with them as they made their way during removal to Indian Territory. And, you've got some more, you know, some other ones like Dover, originally I think Dover, Delaware. And then it comes to, you know, Dover, Dover, England, and then you've got Lebanon, which comes from Lebanon, Tennessee. And then I looked at Lebanon, Tennessee's origin, and it was, for the cedar trees in Lebanon, Tennessee, which I guess, have a there's a biblical...

Thompson: Cedars of Lebanon.

Harvey: Thank you. Trait. And, and so that was, that came and there was, it was a headquarters of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. And then lastly is Kildare, which again, most likely named after County Kildare in Ireland. So you got a lot of people bringing, you know, their place names, their culture with them as, as they're coming into Oklahoma.

Thompson: Bob, one that's been lost to time that I can't figure out who it was named for is Gene Autry. (laughter)

Blackburn: It’s Roy Rogers.

Thompson: That's what I thought. But I wanted to get some more. (laughter)

Blackburn: A name that I grew up with that I didn't know anything about for years here in Oklahoma City, Tinker Air Force Base.

Thompson: Okay.

Blackburn: And it's the largest employer in the state, Tinker Air Force Base, we've known since, you know, World War II was on board. My dad was in the Army Air Corps, so that was of interest to me. But, when it was first established, when the war, before we entered the war, actually the European war was going and America was arming and they needed a depot somewhere in the Midwest for the Army Air Corps. There was no Air Force at the time, but it was part of the Army. And they decided to come to Oklahoma City and it was called Midwest Air Depot originally. So Midwest City comes from Midwest Air Depot.

Thompson: I honestly did not know that. That's, that's news to me.

Blackburn: So that was it. And when Bill Atkinson established a town, he did the name after the base. Well, in 1942, there was a a, a major general, with the Air Force named Clarence Tinker, who is Osage. And Clarence had joined the army during the Philippine Insurrection and served in the army, later became a pilot, learned to fly at Tinker Air Force, excuse me, at Fort Sill, which was a center for aviation with the Army Air Corps at the time, and was a real advocate for aviation in the interwar period. When the war began, they put him in charge of the air base in Honolulu that had been destroyed by the Japanese. And he was a very aggressive warrior, typical of Osage traditions. And, but like Lawrence Hart, a good example of that, became a Marine, Air Force, jet fighter pilot. The warrior tradition would live among American Indians. And generally American Indian tribes over the years have volunteered for service in the military in greater numbers than any other part of the of our society. But Clarence Tinker was one of those warriors, very aggressive. And out of Hawaii, he planned several missions to bomb Midway and other Japanese outposts. And on one of those raids, plane went down and killed him. And so in his honor, an Osage Indian from Osage County, they named Tinker Air Force Base, renamed it from Midwest to Tinker. And so that's the name that we know now. And we need to honor Clarence Tinker as not only a great war hero, but an Osage Indian and someone who was willing to serve his country.

Thompson: That's great. That's great. That's a good story. I, I knew some of that, but not all of that, so that's good. Chantry, do you have any others to share with us?

Banks: Well, I wanted to ask Dr. Blackburn to clarify what I, what I grew up hearing about the the community of Berlin, Oklahoma. Is it true that it was originally called Berlin until this wave of anti-German hate rose in the state or in the country?

Blackburn: I think you're right.

Banks: Okay. Because there's also in Roger Mills County, that's in Roger Mills County. There's also Hamburg in Roger Mills County, a little community there. So I don't know if it was, you know, originally called Hamburg until we decided we had to change the pronunciation of things.

Thompson: Well, we know that German settlements would, Germans did migrate to northwest Oklahoma for the farming. And we know that they established communities out there as well, so it stands to reason.

Banks: Yeah, I was wondering if, you know, there there are certain towns pronunciations in this state that, you know, you are an Okie or you're not an Okie. If you don't if you can't pronounce, the town correctly, and I was wondering if you had any that come to mind immediately.

Harvey: Durant.

Banks: Durant. Okay.

Blackburn: Miami.

Banks: Miami.

Thompson: Well, one of my favorites that you hear mispronounced a lot is Tahlequah. Because if you hear someone that is pronouncing it and they’re from out of state, sometimes on the news or whether it's, you hear “Tah-LEE-quah.”

Banks: Yes. Yeah. Well, a very famous, a more recent example of that is that first season of Only Murders in the Building where Tina Fey's character mispronounces Chickasha.

Harvey: They had to go back.

Banks: And they had to correct in season two. For me, it's Vici. People say “Vicki” all the time or “Vichi, which is that's actually the, yeah, the, the town was named after veni, vidi, vici the, the Latin term there. So, it says in jest in the, in, Mr. Shirk’s book, it does say in jest. So maybe it wasn't, maybe nobody was conquering anything there in Vici, Oklahoma.

Harvey: I have a friend who grew up here, but her parents did not. And she thought that Miami, Oklahoma, was supposed to be pronounced Miami, but that Gary England just had a very thick Oklahoma accent. And I had to explain to her that no, it is actually Miami. (laughter)

Blackburn: He was a Seiling boy.

Banks: Yeah.

Blackburn: One little quick pop culture reference here. You reminded me of that, Chantry. My mother had a television show, and she was interviewing Bob Hope one day on the show, and, Bob Hope kind of turned around the interview. He said, well, Ida, where were you born, because of her accent? And she said, Ninnekah. And he said, Ninnekah, where is that? She said, oh, about eight miles from Agawam. (laughter) And Bob Hope says, Ida, that's funny. That's a good joke. (laughter)

Thompson: Oh, man,

Harvey: We could do a whole podcast on funny stories of Ida B.

Blackburn: Yeah, yeah.

Thompson: Well, I'll, I'll close this out here with a story about the name behind the city of Langston and Langston University. And, Langston was actually named for John Mercer Langston. And I realized that I have talked about three gentlemen named John here today. And I did not do that on purpose. I kind of picked these towns randomly, and they were all named for someone named John. Of course Beavers Bend wasn’t a town.

But, John Mercer Langston was born free on a plantation in Virginia in 1829. He was the son of a woman, Lucy Langston, who had been enslaved but had since been freed. And then his father was a white man, Captain Ralph Quarles, who had been her former enslaver. He's actually sent to Ohio to be raised by a close friend of John Quarles. And he attended Oberlin College and studied law. In 1854, he became the first African American to pass the bar in Ohio. And, he made an important speech at the American Anti-Slavery convention in 1855. And this is a quote from the speech. I really like this quote. “There is not within the length and breadth of this entire country, from Maine to Georgia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a solitary man or woman who is in possession of his or her full share of civil, religious, and political liberty. We have been in the habit of boasting of our Declaration of Independence, our federal Constitution, and the Ordinance of 1787, and yet I am forced to declare, looking the truth directly in the face and seeing the power of American slavery, that there is not within the bosom of this entire country a solitary man or woman who can say, I have my full share of liberty.”

He was a passionate advocate for civil rights and equal rights for, for Black Americans. He helped found the National Equal Rights League with Frederick Douglass in 1864. In 1867, he was selected to be the inspector general of the Freedmen's Bureau, and then he later went on to become law professor at Howard University in 1869, and was then made the dean of the law school in 1870. He ran for Congress as a Republican from Virginia in 1888, and the results of the election were disputed. Finally, in 1890, the House of Representatives settled the dispute and and brought him in, and then he lost his reelection bid, and he died in 1897 at the age of 68 years old. But that is who Langston University and the city of Langston are named for. Just north of here, where we are in Oklahoma City.

Blackburn: Real hero.

Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I've had the best time learning about some of these place names. And, thank you, Chantry. And thank you, Nicole, for going on this little lark with us. This is definitely a different kind of podcast than we've done before, but I had a lot of fun with it.

Banks: We could have gone all day, I'm afraid.

Thompson: Oh, yeah, I, I had more to talk about. So I think we may have to revisit this topic sometime in the future. What do you say, Bob?

Blackburn: Let’s do it.

Thompson: Okay. Well, with that, we will look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks and have a great day.

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