Ardmore: Where the Railroad Met the Oil Field

Ardmore did not exist until the railroad arrived. In eighteen eighty-seven, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe punched through Chickasaw Indian Territory along the Red River corridor, and a town appeared almost overnight at this stop. Railroad officials named it for a Philadelphia suburb they happened to know.

Within a decade Ardmore had become the commercial center of southern Indian Territory, populated in roughly equal parts by African Americans, Native Americans, and white settlers, built on cattle and cotton. Then in nineteen oh five oil was discovered nearby, and in nineteen thirteen the massive Healdton Oil Field came in, making Carter County the largest oil-producing county in Oklahoma. In nineteen fifteen a gasoline tanker exploded in town, killing more than forty people and destroying much of the original downtown.

Ardmore rebuilt and kept growing, today the main regional city between Oklahoma City and the Texas border.