Lincoln County

By Glen V. McIntyre

To the east of Oklahoma City, Lincoln County lies in east central Oklahoma with Chandler as its county seat. The county was opened by two land runs: the first on September 22, 1891, and again four years later on May 23, 1895. The land is primarily rolling grass hills covered with stands of blackjack oak and post oak and is part of what is called the Crosstimbers. Images of America: Lincoln County celebrates the different tribes that lived in the area: the Sac and Fox, the Iowa, and the Kickapoo. It also features famous lawman Bill Tilghman, Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe, poet Jennie Harris Oliver, and governors J.B.A. Robertson and Roy J. Turner. Oil came early to Lincoln County and continues to play a large role in the economy. At one time, the county was covered in cotton fields. It is also a center of transportation with several railroads, old Route 66, and the Turner Turnpike, which today is the major road connecting Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Apr 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781439642900

Glen V. McIntyre

Glen McIntyre recently retired as archivist at the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center in Enid, Oklahoma. He has family ties to Logan County and spent much of his youth visiting Guthrie and eastern portions of the county in particular. He is excited to share the images and stories of this area in Guthrie and Logan County.

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INTRODUCTION

Lincoln County lies immediately to the east of Oklahoma City in east central Oklahoma. Payne County lies to its north and Pottawatomie County to its south. Creek and Okfuskee Counties are to its east. Chandler, its county seat (with a population of 3,100 in 2010), lies some 45 minutes northeast of Oklahoma City. The major towns of the county include Agra, Carney, Davenport, Fallis, Kendrick, Meeker, Prague, Sparks, Stroud, Tryon, Warwick, and Wellston. Many other small communities such as Midlothian and Payson are just memories.

The topography of the county includes rolling hills and woods, interspersed with areas of grassland with the elevation sloping generally from northwest to southeast. The entire county lies in what are called the Cross Timbers, a woodland consisting primarily of black jack oak (Quercus marilandica) and post oak (Quercus stellata). The limbs of the trees are so thickly intertwined that an early visitor to the area, Washington Irving, who came through in 1832, said it was like trying to ride through forests of cast iron. In between the woods are interspersed areas of tall grass prairie.

The primary river of the county is the Deep Fork of the Arkansas, usually just called the Deep Fork River, which runs from west to east near the center of the county. The Cimarron River lies just a few miles to the north of the northwest part of the county while the North Canadian River clips the southwest edge of the county.

Lincoln County did not originally have a large population of Native Americans, but after the Civil War, the federal government decided to move several Midwestern tribes to what is now Lincoln County.

The principal tribe moved here was the Sac and Fox tribe. Originally two tribes, the Sac, sometimes spelled Sauk, and the Fox have been considered a single tribe since the mid-1800s. They originally lived in the upper Midwest and were gradually pushed west until 1870, when the Sac and Fox Agency was established near what is now the town of Stroud in eastern Lincoln County. The reservation for this tribe consisted of much of what is now Lincoln County.

The Iowa tribe was also originally from the upper Midwest. They began moving into what is now Oklahoma in 1878, receiving a reservation in 1883. Their present-day headquarters lie just to the north of Lincoln County in Perkins.

The Kickapoo tribe is the third tribe that was moved to Lincoln County. The Kickapoo originated in Wisconsin but were forced west, many eventually moving to Texas and even to Mexico. They received a reservation in what is now Lincoln County in 1883.

Lincoln County was established by the second of the five land runs that settled central and western Oklahoma. The land run of September 22, 1891, opened the Sac and Fox lands and the Iowa lands. Problems with the surveying of town lots delayed the opening of Chandler until it had its own run on September 28, 1891. The entire land run area in addition to Lincoln County contained land that later became Pottawatomie County with its county seat at Tecumseh. Some 20,000 people made the run for 6,095 homesteads or about 1.12 million acres.

The Kickapoo reservation made up the other portion of Lincoln County, and it was not opened until the land run of May 23, 1895, in which 200,000 acres were opened for settlement.

The government had designated the town of Chandler to be the seat of what was originally just called County A. A special election was held to name the county and the name Lincoln won with 43 percent of the vote.

Lincoln County is a center for transportation in east central Oklahoma. Railroads soon built into Lincoln County, with the St. Louis and San Francisco (called the Frisco) coming through in 1898. Other railroads included a branch of the Rock Island nicknamed The Peavine, which ran from Guthrie to Chandler. The Fort Smith and Western also came to Chandler from Guthrie via Fallis. The Missouri, Kansas, and Texas (called the Katy) ran from the southwest to the northeast through Tryon and Agra. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe (called the Santa Fe) came through Davenport to the northeast.

The famous Route 66, sometimes called the Main Street of America, or the Mother Road, was built in 1926. It goes through Lincoln County connecting Stroud, Prague, and Chandler with Oklahoma City to the west and Tulsa to the East.

Today, the Turner Turnpike, the major highway connecting Oklahoma City and Tulsa, goes straight through Lincoln County. It was authorized by the Oklahoma legislature in 1947 and completed in May 1953.

Lincoln County was the home of two governors of Oklahoma: James Brooks Ayers Robertson and Roy J. Turner. A famous early-day marshal named Bill Tilghman made Lincoln County his home. Jennie Harris Oliver, for a time poet laureate