Foss, Oklahoma

The town of Foss grew up in a valley along Turkey Creek after the eighteen ninety-two Cheyenne and Arapaho land opening brought settlers into western Oklahoma. By the late eighteen nineties a community called Maharg, an anagram of Graham, had taken root nearby. Then on May second, nineteen oh two, a flash flood swept through and wiped out the creek-bottom settlement, drowning several residents and destroying businesses.

Survivors rebuilt on higher ground and named the new town Foss. The Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad, an arm of the Rock Island line, served the town and helped make it a regional trade center. By nineteen thirty Foss counted more than five hundred residents, though prairie economics steadily trimmed that number across the following decades.