Newkirk, OK

Newkirk is Kay County’s seat, with a stone courthouse, a National Register downtown, and the Arkansas River/Kaw Lake edge just east of town. The city sits on land that was part of the Cherokee Outlet until the 1893 opening, and its county-seat story began with a government townsite chosen away from the original proposed location at Kildare. When Kaw Dam created Kaw Lake, Washunga Cemetery was moved to higher ground rather than covered by the reservoir. The Deer Creek and Bryson Paddock sites preserve traces of eighteenth-century Wichita villages near the river. Newkirk is north-central Oklahoma with courthouse stone, reservoir water, and deep Indigenous history.