Noble County Cities and Townships History
Noble County Cities and Townships History
Located on State Highway 15, five miles west of Interstate Highway 35, in the northwest corner of Noble County, Billings is approximately thirty-five miles from both Enid and Ponca City, Oklahoma, the major shopping and medical centers for residents. Billings actually began in the Cherokee Outlet land run of 1893 as the town of White Rock, located three miles east and two miles south of its present location, and prospered in an agricultural area devoted to livestock and grain.
This prosperity encouraged the Enid and Tonkawa Railway (after 1900, part of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway) to run a spur line out from North Enid in 1899. The railroad, however, did not go through White Rock, and the residents soon moved to the new location. After a Billings Town Company formed, with directors M. O. Billings, Wesley Taylor, and James M. Taylor, the town was named for Billings. A Spring Carnival souvenir booklet dated April 14, 1900, reveals that the townsite was opened October 23, 1899. By April the population approached eight hundred, served by forty business houses, three churches, and two lodges.
After peaking at 846 in 1920, the population varied from 500 to 600 from 1930 to 1980. The Billings News informed the community from 1902 through 1985. One graduate of Billings High School, Henry L. Bellmon of the class of 1938, made a significant contribution to the history of Oklahoma. He served two terms both as governor of Oklahoma and in the U.S. Senate.
With a 1990 population of 555, the town
had lost most of its downtown merchants. However, employment was provided by a
manufacturing plant, a grain elevator, a nursing home, and the local school
system. The nearby county seat, Perry, provides a major source of employment and
the closest hospital. Ironically, the railroad tracks that brought Billings into
being were removed in 1986, but the community remained. At the end of the
twentieth century it supported two museums, the Renfrow-Miller Museum and the
Henry and Shirley Bellmon Museum, in addition to an active chamber of commerce.
Population in 2000 stood at 436.
Situated in Noble County on State Highway 156 twelve miles due east of Interstate 35 and approximately twenty-three miles north-northeast of Perry, Marland, formerly Bliss, developed as a shipping point on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The town has had three incarnations, the first two as Bliss. The surrounding region, primarily grassland and formerly part of the Ponca Reservation, was leased for grazing by the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch. At the Santa Fe tracks on the edge of their ranch, the Millers built stockyards and other facilities for shipping cattle. South of that location a small rural community grew up circa 1898 in Section 24 of Buffalo Township, where there came to be a lumberyard, a general store, and a few residents by 1900. Grain elevators were erected at the tracks in 1904. Ranch correspondence and advertising generally used "Bliss" or "Bliss Station" as the Miller's home base. In the early years of the century the brothers held various Wild West shows at the ranch's summer camp near Bliss Station. Visitors took the train to the depot that Santa Fe built there.
In early 1906 the Millers platted a town on the east side of the railroad and sold town lots that summer. Businesses that had been located south of there, at the existing community, moved northwest to the railroad. Buffalo Township's population stood at 326 at 1907 statehood and by 1910 had risen to 380. Bliss claimed 200 residents in that year. One of the largest businesses was Miller Brothers Livestock, Grain, and Hay, but a bank, two other grain dealers, two hotels, and several stores also operated.
In 1917 the Millers decided to move the town a mile north, to the other side of the tracks. They platted "New Bliss" there. By that time the population had reached 250, and the town supported a good number of businesses, most catering to the area's farming-based economy. The Marland-Red Rock Record printed the news. The town shipped more wheat, corn, and livestock that any other shipping point in the county for a number of years. Three ranches, the 101, the Big V, and the Big L, used the stockyards facilities. Because of petroleum exploration in the region after 1916, oil-field supply shipping also became important until the boom ended in the late 1920s.
In an April 1922 election the citizens voted to rename the town Marland, to honor oilman Ernest W. Marland of nearby Ponca City, who had extensive drilling operations in the nearby Three Sands/Tonkawa Field. The Millers and the townspeople hoped that he would locate some of his oil operations at Bliss/Marland, but the only Marland Oil Company presence that ever developed there was a loading rack where a pipeline terminated at railroad. In 1923 disappointed citizens petitioned, unsuccessfully, for a return to "Bliss," because mail bound for Marland was being misrouted to Mooreland. In 1925 the town supported two elevators, two lumberyards, two hotels, Methodist and Christian churches, and the Marland Consolidated School.
By 1930, 361 people called the little town home, but the Great Depression of the 1930s bankrupted the Miller Brothers ranch and the Three Sands Field went dry. Hard circumstances thereby reduced the town to 257 residents in 1940, 221 in 1950, and 191 in 1960. An upswing in the oil industry in the 1970s brought people back to the area, and by 1980 the U.S. Census registered a population of 340. In 1990 and 2000 it held steady at 280. Most residents work elsewhere, many in Perry.
Lying in Noble County on U.S. Highway 64, sixteen miles due east of Perry, the county seat, and two miles west of U.S. 412/Cimarron Turnpike, Morrison is a small agricultural town. The community emerged in 1894 in the southeastern part of the county less than a mile south of Black Bear Creek, a tributary of the Cimarron River, in Autry Township. Earlier, the area had been the Osage tribe's hunting grounds. After 1835 the Cherokee Outlet, created for the Cherokee Nation, included this area. The Outlet was opened to non-Indian settlement by land run in September 1893.
Roselda Morrison, wife of James Morrison, owned the land upon which the town emerged. Nearby, a man named Autry (for whom the township was named) built a store, which received a postal designation as Autry in 1893. James Morrison had purchased the store, and the post office was redesignated Morrison in February 1894, with Edward L. Parris as postmaster. Morrison donated forty acres for a town, which was surveyed and platted in August 1894. The community incorporated on August 13, 1894. Businesses that developed there moved slightly to the south when the Arkansas Valley and Western Railroad (after 1907 a part of the St. Louis and San Francisco, or Frisco, Railway system) surveyed its Tulsa-Pawnee-Perry-Enid line through Morrison in 1902. In that year its first addition was platted. In September 1903 the tracks were built through town. With Charles G. Jones, as president the Arkansas Valley Townsite Company, was developing various towns along the railroad and owned numerous lots in the 1902 addition. It auctioned the lots in August 1904. By that time citizens supported three banks, three hotels, three lumberyards, two churches, a consolidated public school, and a grain elevator. Morrison became a prosperous agricultural trade center serving wheat farmers and ranchers. At 1907 statehood the population was 351.
Because of rail and highway access, Morrison remained commercially viable through the middle of the twentieth century. Several newspapers published in the first two decades included the Sun, the New Era, the Progress, the Homecrofter, and the Democrat. The Morrison Transcript was printed from the 1910s through the 1950s.
Oil prospecting from 1915 through 1919 resulted in the opening of large natural gas fields east of Morrison in Pawnee County. At the time, they were some of the largest fields in the Mid-Continent region. The gas supplied Oklahoma City via pipeline. In 1923 oil fields that opened north of Morrison, also in Pawnee County, continued to provide jobs and business opportunities.
The petroleum industry and agriculture insured the town's future against the post-World War I agricultural depression. In 1920 the population was 353, but during the Great Depression it dropped to 284 in 1930. However, outlying farms still supported four cotton gins in 1930. The 1940 population stood at 333 and in 1950, at 297. A bank, the Farmers' Trading Association elevator and lumberyard, and eleven retail businesses continued to operate through the mid-1950s.
For the next thirty years the town
remained stable, supporting grain and cotton services and a dozen retail
businesses. The population rebounded to 421 by 1970 and increased to 671 in 1980
with the revival of oil production. The figure has since remained steady,
reaching 636 in 2000. Highway access allows residents to commute to jobs in
nearby cities. The Morrison Baptist Church (NR 84003357) and the Morrison
Suspension Bridge (NR 80003277, no longer extant) have been listed in the
National Register of Historic Places.
County seat of Noble County, Perry is located sixty miles north of Oklahoma City, two miles east of Interstate 35 at the junction of U.S. Highways 64 and 77. Early Indian inhabitants called an area south of present Perry "mendota," meaning "many dead men," because of a battle in which many were killed. When the Southern Kansas Railway (part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe system) built its line in 1886 through the Unassigned Lands of central Oklahoma, a siding, depot, and water station called Wharton was established near present Perry. A few Cherokee had filed on land around Wharton. The federal government selected the site for the placement of a land office for the Perry district before the 1893 Cherokee Outlet Opening. The land office was located a mile north of Wharton and named for J. A. Perry, one of the men sent by the government to lay out the land-office towns.
The morning of September 16, 1893, the land north of the Unassigned Lands was a barren prairie. Perry consisted of the land office and post office, the railroad station being a mile south. When the gunshot sounded at noon, thousands of people on the lines, north and south, ran for the land available for settlement. Much money had been offered for photographs of the previous runs, but no photographers had attended. This time several were on hand, as the money offered by the newspapers and magazines was worth more than a farm. Perry became incorporated on September 20, 1893.
An estimated twenty-five thousand people spent the first night in Perry. As lumber had been illegally sent to Wharton in a bundle labeled "Land Office," buildings sprang up there like mushrooms, and a saloon was in full operation by four o'clock that afternoon. Trains did not stop in Perry, but did in Wharton. This created a problem with freight, which had to be hauled to Perry from the siding over roads fording Cow Creek. To make matters worse, there was no way to know whether freight had arrived except by making the trip to Wharton. Passengers also had to detrain there, with no way to communicate their presence. Before the end of 1893, a telephone line had been constructed from the southeast corner of the square to Wharton. This line was soon extended to Pawnee and Stillwater because these towns also lacked train service. The line was further extended and in 1919 became the Southwestern Bell Telegraph and Telephone Company. Perry's original town of 320 acres soon had five additions. By 1900 the population numbered 3,351 and at 1907 statehood, 2,881. Three school buildings were constructed in the late 1890s, and on the town square a two-story, wood-frame county courthouse was erected. It was replaced by a substantial stone building in 1915-16. Eight churches served the 1920 population of 3,154.
Perry was the home of Gov. Henry S. Johnston, who arrived and opened a law office after the land opening. He spent the rest of his life here as a lawyer except for the two years during which he served as governor and lived in Oklahoma City. He served as president pro tempore of the 1906 Constitutional Convention and was the first to occupy the governor's mansion. Buster Keaton claimed Perry as his hometown, as he spent his summers there with his grandparents. He went on stage for the first time in Perry at the Grand Opera House, a place in which many entertainers played, including John Philip Sousa, Will Rogers, and the Polly Circus, which featured a live elephant, five horses, and a troop of Shetland ponies, all on stage. A number of newspapers have informed the community, including the turn-of-the-century Noble County Sentinel and the Daily Democrat and the Daily Journal from 1946 into the twenty-first century. The population continued to grow, climbing to 5,045 by 1940 and peaking at 5,796 in 1980.
Throughout the twentieth century the community's main economic activities and sources of income remained wheat farming, agribusiness, cattle raising, and petroleum production. In 2003 Perry's largest employers were CMW (Charles Machine Works), makers of the "Ditch Witch" trenching machines, and Division IV of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. One of the smallest towns to receive a Carnegie Library grant, Perry has used the building continuously since 1909. Perry Lake Park, called CCC Park, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. The lake, boat dock, and picnic shelters remain in use. Perry Airport, located seven miles north of town, was built as an emergency landing strip during World War II. The three five-thousand-foot asphalt runways were once used for jet airplanes from Enid's Vance Air Force Base but now serve Perry's residents.
The Cherokee Strip Museum preserves the history of the land opening and the
region's development. Half of the population of Noble County live in the city of
Perry, which had 5,230 inhabitants according to the 2000 census. Perry maintains
an aldermanic form of government. Perry has four edifices and one district
listed in the National Register of Historic Places at the turn of the
twenty-first century. They were the First National Bank and Trust Company
Building (NR 79002003), Noble County Courthouse (NR 84003361), Perry National
Guard Armory (NR 88001362), Perry Courthouse Square Historic District (NR
03000881), and Wolleson-Nicewander Building (NR 79002004).
Located in northern Noble County six miles west of U.S. Highway 177 on State Highway 15, Red Rock lies in Carson Township sixteen miles north-northeast of Perry, the county seat. Long before non-Indian settlement the area was the Osage tribe's hunting grounds. The Oto and Missouri tribes were moved onto a reservation in this area in 1881. Much of the reservation land was leased to the 101 Ranch, owned by the Miller Brothers, for grazing. Their headquarters was on the Salt Fork River, ten miles north of present Red Rock.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) built its tracks through future Noble County in 1886. With huge corrals being built near the railroad at Otoe Switch, several miles south, the area became an important shipping point for cattle herds in the Cherokee Outlet. No real towns yet existed, as the land belonged to the reservation, but a trading post operated at the railroad's crossing of Red Rock Creek. A designation of "Magnolia" was given to a post office there in March 1890 to serve the vicinity. In June 1892 Magnolia post office was redesignated Red Rock. An 1898 state gazetteer described Red Rock as "a shipping point of importance located on the AT&SF Railway at the point where that road crosses Red Rock Creek."
In 1902 and 1903 much of the Oto-Missouri land was offered for sale, and in July 1903 the present town of Red Rock was platted in a new location and adjacent to the railroad in Carson Township. Lots were offered for sale on July 20. Buildings from Otoe Switch, six miles south, may have been moved north to the new site, which was situated on land owned by Joseph Plumley. Two banks incorporated immediately, and one built the town's first brick building in summer 1903. It was used until 1955 when the bank was sold to the First National Bank of Perry and the building demolished. A devastating fire in November 1913 destroyed an entire block of businesses, and in 1915 a public water works system was installed.
In 1910 the federal census recorded Red Rock's population at 378, and by 1917 the community numbered around five hundred residents. Serving a surrounding farming and ranching area were a bank, two drug stores, four grocery and general merchandise stores, two grain elevators, two hardware stores, a hotel, a cafe and a lumberyard. Newspapers have included the Red Rock Opinion and the Red Rock Record.
The community's educational institutions had served a large area. In the late 1970s Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company built a generating plant six miles east of town. With the extra property tax money that the school district received, a new public-school campus was established one mile east of Red Rock, and a new school building was completed in 1982. In 1989 the patrons of the Marland School District decided to consolidate with Red Rock. As a result, the tax base grew much larger, enabling the community to develop one of the most modern schools in the state. The district's name was changed to Frontier.
Red Rock's population declined over the years. After hovering around 400 in the 1930s and 1940s, the number declined to 253 in 1950 and 233 in 1970. The remaining elevator, a cooperative, was sold to the Perry cooperative elevator company and then closed. Although no service stations or grocery stores remain, the town supports three churches, a garage, a feed store, and a pecan dealer. A new post office building was erected in 1985. The 2000 census recorded 293 residents.