Henryetta, Oklahoma

Henryetta sits on Creek Nation land in Okmulgee County, and its founding is a study in layered identity. Hugh Henry arrived in eighteen eighty-five, discovered coal, and pitched his tent on land that still legally belonged to the Muscogee Creek Nation. A post office opened in nineteen hundred under the name Henryetta, which was actually derived not from founder Hugh Henry but from two other local figures: merchant Henry G.

Beard and his wife, Etta. By nineteen oh nine, fourteen coal mines were running full shift, producing sixty-five thousand tons a month and pushing a reported seventy thousand dollars in weekly wages back through the local economy. The mining era faded, but Henryetta remained.

Today it is perhaps best known as the hometown of Troy Aikman, the quarterback who led the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl championships in the nineteen nineties and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in two thousand six.