Wynnewood, OK

Wynnewood began as Walner in 1886, in the Chickasaw Nation of Indian Territory, when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway was being laid through the Washita Valley. Railroad workers from Pennsylvania supplied the new name, borrowing Wynnewood from the community outside Philadelphia. The line turned the place into a market town for farms around southeastern Garvin County, and the Washita River still runs just west of town. That mix of rail, river, and agriculture is the basic shape of Wynnewood.

Education became a surprisingly big part of Wynnewood’s story. A Presbyterian school for Chickasaw children moved here in 1887, and local citizens paid to build Indianola College in 1901. When the college closed in 1909, the town used the building as its junior and senior high school until 1927. On the ground today, U.S. 77 and State 29 carry the everyday traffic, the county-seat role pulls people in from the surrounding farm country, and the old Eskridge Hotel keeps the early rail-town era visible.