Peoria, Oklahoma: Named for the Tribe

Over the nineteenth century, the federal government pushed displaced Midwestern tribes west. Among them was the Peoria Tribe, a people of the Illinois Confederacy, who were moved to Kansas in eighteen thirty-two and finally to what is now northeastern Oklahoma in eighteen sixty-seven. Sixty years later, in eighteen ninety-one, lead and zinc were discovered in the area's rich ore deposits, and a mining camp sprang up almost overnight.

The Post Office Department honored the tribe by naming the camp's post office Peoria. At its height the mining settlement held several hundred residents by some accounts, and in eighteen ninety-eight it incorporated as a town. By eighteen ninety-seven the richest ore had shifted north toward Miami, and Peoria's boom faded quickly.

The town survives today as a small Ottawa County community, its name a permanent reminder of the people who were here long before the miners.