Haskell, OK

Haskell grew beside the Midland Valley Railroad in Muskogee County, nineteen miles northwest of Muskogee on US 64. The town takes its name from Charles N. Haskell, a townsite promoter who became Oklahoma’s first governor. The railroad arrived in 1904, and it pulled nearby Sawokla’s store and cotton gin into the new settlement. Sawokla was a Hitchiti town of the Muscogee Creek Nation and the home of Samuel Checote, who later became principal chief of the Creek Nation. That makes Haskell’s origin story a meeting of a planned rail town and an older Creek community.

The local map now stretches from US 64 to Haskell City Park and Haskell Lake, about three miles northwest of town. The lake is known for fishing, giving Haskell a nearby water stop alongside its highway and railroad history. US 64 runs southeast to Muskogee and northwest toward Tulsa via Bixby, so the town’s regional connections are easy to read from the road. Haskell’s local scoop is in the sequence: Sawokla came first, the railroad shifted the commercial center, and the lake gives the town another point of reference.