Healdton, OK

Healdton is a Carter County city on State Highway 76, about five miles north of U.S. 70 and roughly 24 miles west of Ardmore. The 2020 census counted 2,328 residents. Healdton Municipal Lake lies northeast of town, and the Healdton Oil Museum and National Guard armory keep local history visible along the highway-and-street grid. Schools, city services, and county roads connect the community to the Ardmore area, while oil production still continues in the surrounding field on a smaller scale.

The post office began in 1883, when the settlement was still called Mason. The community took the name Healdton for Charles H. Heald, who became postmaster in 1897. Cotton had been the first local business, but the 1913 discovery of the Healdton Oil Field changed the town's direction after a new railroad bypassed it. The Ringling and Oil Fields Railway reached the area in 1916–17, and the post office moved toward the tracks. By 1918 the field supplied about 15 percent of Oklahoma's oil output, leaving Healdton with a history written in cotton, rail, and petroleum.