Vinita, Oklahoma: Named for a Sculptor

Elias Cornelius Boudinot, a Cherokee attorney, founded this town in eighteen seventy-one and named it for his friend Vinnie Ream, a sculptor who had just become the first woman artist to receive a commission from the United States government. Ream had won the commission for a life-size marble statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Capitol Rotunda at the age of eighteen. Boudinot first called the place Downingville, then changed it to Vinita in her honor.

The town grew into one of the most significant centers in the Cherokee Nation, claiming at least one first for Oklahoma: it is described as the first city in the state with electricity. When Route Sixty-Six was commissioned in nineteen twenty-six, Vinita already had fifty-five years of history behind it. It remains the Craig County seat today.