The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

MACOMB.

Located in Pottawatomie County, Macomb is ten miles southwest of Tecumseh on State Highway 59B, four and one-half miles west of U.S. Highway 177. The town was built on land owned by Hattie Vieux (Mrs. G. W.) Kime, who had received an Indian allotment.

The community grew when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway survey bypassed Burnett, and Burnett entrepreneurs moved to Macomb. On May 29, 1903, the post office, originally designated as McComb, opened. The town's name was changed to Macomb on July 16, 1915, to reflect the proper spelling of its namesake, a Santa Fe railroad engineer whose last name was Macomb.

The McComb Herald's first edition, published December 28, 1904, proclaimed that the "Queen City of South Pottawatomie County" had a population of 350. The census reported 166 in 1910. Business establishments included five general stores, several drug stores, hardware and grocery stores, meat markets, two cotton gins and gristmills, two saloons, a bank, a furniture and coffin store, a hotel and restaurant, a blacksmith, and a millinery shop. Macomb was a service center for the surrounding agricultural area.

In honor of his being the first baby born in Macomb (on September 6, 1903), Granville H. McNair received town lot number eleven. In 1904 the first school, a four-room building, housed eighty-eight pupils. The school grew when the early-day Lone Star and Mount Zion schools closed. In the 1940s and 1950s Prairie View, Anderson, and Eagle schools consolidated with Macomb. Fraternal organizations such as the Masonic Order, the IOOF (Odd Fellows), and the Woodman of the World were established during the early twentieth century.

Almost as quickly as the town had grown and prospered on the prairies, it began to decline. In 1920 the census reported a population of 281. In 1930 the number had dropped to 197. Drought brought about an end to the large cotton crops once raised in the area. By 1950 the population had dwindled to 123. With 61 residents at the turn of the twenty-first century, Macomb had one commercial business, a post office, fire station, Assembly of God Church, community center, Masonic lodge, and the Macomb Public School. The 2010 census reported 32 inhabitants. The April 2020 census found 23.

Bessie Cope