Tonkawa, Oklahoma - History

History

Named after the Tonkawa tribe, the city of Tonkawa was founded in March 1894, by Eli V. Blake and Wiley William Gregory. Blake and Gregory, originally from Kansas, claimed the land that would become Tonkawa in the Land Run of 1893. Prior to the land run, from 1879 to 1885, this area was home to the Nez Perce. The Blackwell and Southern Railway (later bought by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway) built a line through Tonkawa, which stimulated growth of the town. In 1901, the Oklahoma Territory Legislature established the University Preparatory School (now Northern Oklahoma College) here. By statehood, the population was 1,238. The discovery of oil caused a boom in the 1920s, and the population was 3,311 in 1930.

Read more about this topic:  Tonkawa, Oklahoma

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
    —Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    “The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.”
    —Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)

    “The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
    —Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)