Wilburton, OK

Wilburton is the county seat of Latimer County in the Sans Bois Mountains, a town whose story runs from stagecoach stop to coal-and-rail center. Before the present townsite, Riddle’s Station served the Butterfield Overland Mail route from 1857 to 1861. The modern community was platted in 1890 as the Choctaw Coal and Railway line reached southeastern Oklahoma, and the favored name story points to Will Burton, a contractor and surveyor on that work. Robbers Cave State Park lies north of town. Wilburton is an Oklahoma place with a courthouse role, an old mail-road memory, and coal-country bones.