Tonkawa: Two Farmers and a College Town

Tonkawa began with two Kansas farmers who claimed adjoining quarter sections during the Cherokee Outlet land run of September eighteen ninety-three and decided to donate part of their land for a town. Eli Blake and Wiley William Gregory filed their claims, the plat was recorded in March of eighteen ninety-four. The town took its name from the Tonkawa people, a tribe from the southern plains.

The real civic anchor came in nineteen oh one, when the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature funded a University Preparatory School here, today known as Northern Oklahoma College. When the doors opened in September of nineteen oh two, more than two hundred students enrolled. The institution gave Tonkawa something most Cherokee Outlet boomtowns never got: a reason to stay educated and to stay.

The college still operates on its original campus, making Tonkawa one of the more stable small cities in Kay County.