Oilton, OK

Oilton is a Creek County city on the south side of the Cimarron River, with Oklahoma 99 running through the old oil-field town. Walter Eaton and Ed Dunn sold the first lots in January and February 1915, and the first passenger train arrived that March as the Cushing-Drumright Field was opening the area. By 1920 Oilton had 2,231 residents, four hotels, restaurants serving oil-field workers, a bank, and rail connections. The boom also brought Syrian-Lebanese merchants, cotton growers, orchards, and a rock crusher east of town.

Petroleum still gives Oilton its name, though the working landscape has shifted toward agriculture and regional trips to Bristow, Sapulpa, and Sand Springs. The city’s school serves students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, while City Hall and police/fire dispatch remain on the compact Main Street and Fourth Street grid. Oilton sits near the head of Keystone Lake’s inundation area, where the Cimarron country opens toward the lake and the Highway 99 corridor. It is an old boomtown with a school, farm roads, and a river edge still visible in the same map.