Canute, Oklahoma

Canute sits in Washita County on what is now Interstate Forty, and it owes its existence entirely to a railroad lottery. In nineteen oh two, when the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad extended its tracks westward toward Texas, the Great Southwest Townsite Company surveyed the land and held a drawing for town lots. The winner of the name was King Canute of Denmark, though no one recorded why the Danish monarch appealed to Oklahoma settlers.

Within two years the town had two newspapers, two banks, two hotels, two saloons, a photography studio, and a music store. The earlier nearby community, known as Keen after a general merchandise operator named Robert Keen, simply folded into the rail town's orbit. Canute remains a small farm-service community along the old Route Sixty-Six corridor today.