Deer Creek Public Schools - History

History

Deer Creek opened in 1921. Deer Creek is a growing community sprawling over the border between Oklahoma County and Logan County. It is named for the nearby Deer Creek, which snakes through much of the district and occasionally causes the schools to close by flooding during the spring rains.

This region of Oklahoma was part of the Unassigned Lands and was settled during the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. Before the land run began, the area was surveyed into sections by the federal Public Land Survey System, with each section measuring one mile (1.6 km) by one mile, and divided evenly into 160-acre (0.65 km2) homesteads, called quarter-sections. Sections were organized into larger entities, called townships, that consisted of 36 numbered sections. Following a pattern set during the settling of the Northwest Territories in 1787, the Organic Act dedicated section No. 16 for the support of public schools. In the Deer Creek Public School District, both northern quarters and the southwestern quarter were sold to raise funds to build the school. The first school was built on the southeast quarter-section, at what is now called N. MacArthur Boulevard and W. 206th Street in the unincorporated part of Oklahoma County.

During the Great Depression, the federal Works Project Administration built a one-story, red-brick school at the far southeastern corner of this quarter-section. This building included a half-court basketball gymansium, about a dozen classrooms, and a small library. A gymnasium and separate cafeteria were added later. The buildings have since been demolished, but the trees that surrounded the building are still present, and part of the building's brick facade is used on the entrance to the high school's auditorium.