Where Stillwater Began

Stillwater is one of Oklahoma’s most historic communities. It began officially on April 22, 1889, as thousands of homesteaders lined up from nearly as far west as Lake Carl Blackwell to past the present Fairlawn Cemetery on the east and rushed southward into the land know as the Stillwater Valley. Stillwater was one of the first towns settled.

Four and a half years later, on September 16, 1893, thousands more gathered at the same line in Stillwater and rushed northward for homesteads in the Cherokee Strip. Thus, Stillwater was the site of two of the great land runs.

But Stillwater history unofficially began in 1884, nearly five years before the Oklahoma Territory was opened to settlement. On December 8, Capt. William L. Couch led a caravan of homesteaders called Boomers from Wellington, Kansas across the Cherokee Strip and to a stream just inside the Territory. As they settled in tents, cabins, and dugouts, they called the stream the Still Water and their encampment “The Town of Stillwater.”

The Boomer colony did not last long. U.S. Calvary units quickly surrounded it, its supplies were cut off and the settlers were forced to leave by the end of January 1885. But when the land was officially opened in 1889 the homesteaders quickly adopted “Stillwater” as the name of the new town and established a post office on August 28, 1889.

These historic incidents are among the reasons why the city’s motto became “Stillwater-Where Oklahoma Began.”

Stillwater was fortunate in that among the 1889 settlers were brilliant young lawyers, doctors and frontiersmen. Even when Stillwater was a village of 600, they foresaw what it could become a hundred years hence if they could win certain advantages now. They set out to seek the county seat, the land-grant college and townships in the Cherokee Strip.

Their first victory came on May 2, 1890, when Congress passes the Organic Act. It established seven counties in Oklahoma with Stillwater as the seat of the County No. 6. All factions agreed the county should be named for David L. Payne, who founded the Boomer movement in 1879.

Payne made eight attempts to colonize Oklahoma, but each time he was driven out by military. He died on Nov. 28, 1884 in Wellington, Kansas. To honor him, his successor, Capt. William L. Couch, led the Boomers on the excursion to Stillwater Creek. On January 30, 1995, Payne’s remains were brought from Wellington, Kansas, to Stillwater, and on April 20, 1996, they were reinterred at a special ceremony held to dedicate a David L. Payne Memorial at Boomer Park.

The pioneers’ second victory came on Christmas Eve, 1890, as the Territorial legislature voted to make Stillwater the site of the new land-grant college. Oklahoma A&M College held its first enrollment on December 14, 1891.

With the county seat established and the college assured, Stillwater’s leaders began efforts to get Cherokee Strip townships transferred to Payne County. On March 3, 1893, Congress passes a law transferring five Strip townships to Payne County. Eventually Rock and Walnut townships were taken away and given to Noble County, but the Glencoe, Rose and Eden townships helped make Stillwater the center of the county and assured its status as county seat. Meanwhile, Stillwater’s young leaders had been successful in bringing the railroad to town in 1901. With these achievements they believed they had laid the foundation that would make Stillwater a thriving city a hundred years later.

That the village of 600 has grown to a city of 40,000 and the enrollment of the land-grant college exceeds 23,000 is a tribute to their dreams, foresight, and determination.

- D. Earl Newsom, author of “Stillwater – One Hundred Years of Memories” and “The Story of Exciting Payne County”