The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

WOODLAWN PARK.

An incorporated town in Oklahoma County, Woodlawn Park is one of several urban islands surrounded by other towns of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. Woodlawn Park lies within the city of Bethany, which is surrounded by Oklahoma City. Originally the area was the farm of Frank Levi Braniger, who acquired land in Council Grove Township with, or soon after, the Land Run of 1889. In 1923 one of Braniger's sons subdivided a heavily wooded part of the property into residential lots. This became Woodlawn Park, a rectangle of .128 square miles (approximately eighty-one acres), measuring one-half mile east-west and one-quarter mile north-south. It is bounded by Council Road on the west, Glade Avenue on the east, Northwest Thirty-sixth Street on the south, and Northwest Thirty-ninth Street on the north. Within the boundaries, between Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth streets lies a long park, the center of the town. A few homes were constructed in the late 1920s, but most of the development occurred in the late 1940s and through the 1950s.

Incorporation was accomplished in July 1952 as Bethany began to envelop the neighborhood. The 1960 census recorded 129 inhabitants. Woodlawn Park's large lots were gradually sold, and housing construction continued into the 1990s. After peaking at 220 residents in 1970, the community's population declined to 167 in 1980 and was 170 in 1990 and 161 in 2000. The town supports no commercial development. A board of trustees is elected, but city services are provided by Bethany and Oklahoma City. Most residents are employed in management and the professions, and all work in the surrounding metropolitan area. In 2010, 153 persons lived in Woodlawn Park. The April 2020 census reported a population of 158.

Dianna Everett