Cities and Town History of Adair County, Oklahoma

Originally in Woods County but since 1907 statehood in the north-central section of Alfalfa County, the small community of Byron lies on State Highways 8 and 11. In April 1898 V. C. Spurrier applied for and received a postal designation of Byron (named apparently for his relative, who owned a store there), and a rural community soon coalesced. By 1898 Byron was listed in a state gazetteer; however, having no rail access, the settlement only slowly developed. In April 1901 W. C. Edwards bought land for a new townsite about one mile south and one-half mile east of the original settlement. The business buildings were moved from the old to the new site, and by mid-May a new bank, meat market, and lumber yard had opened. In April 1902 the town of Byron was granted incorporation by the Woods County commission, and in October a grain elevator was constructed, anticipating the arrival of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient line that ran south from Kansas through the county. When the line was completed to Byron on October 21, the town celebrated with a huge bonfire, and the railroad laborers were treated to lemonade, cigars, and locally grown apples. After the railroad arrived, Byron boomed. By 1909 its population had peaked at 286. They attended Christian and Methodist churches, kept money in the Byron State Bank, and read the Byron Republican newspaper. The Byron Promoter also published in the early decades of the century. Businesses of the usual types for a small agricultural center's retail-industrial district included two hardware stores, three general stores, a blacksmith, and a flour mill. Early residents enjoyed a skating rink. Wheat and alfalfa were the major products of the nearby farms. By 1920, 249 people called the community home, and the numbers and types of businesses remained consistent. During these years, Byron was an important market and shipping point for grain and livestock in the area between Cherokee, to the south, and Anthony, Kansas, to the north. After that, however, Byron began a slow decline, as agricultural prices dropped and the Great Depression of the 1930s took its toll. The 1930 census counted 197 inhabitants. A political development in 1935 brought Byron into the news: Five women unseated five men for places on the town board. The new trustees paid off all of the town's bonded indebtedness and produced income by selling electricity to the residents. The railroad abandoned its line in 1942. In the 1940s and 1950s only a half-dozen businesses still operated, including one of the state's four warm-water fish hatcheries. Established in 1929 to produce sport fish for state lakes, and eligible farm ponds and annually producing in excess of twenty-five million fish, it is the state's only jar culture hatchery. Adjacent is a twenty-acre Watchable Wildlife Area popular with birders and naturalists. Declining rural population prompted the consolidation of Byron's schools with those of Burlington and Driftwood in the 1960s. The population dropped to 131 in 1950, 72 in 1970, and 57 in 1990. Byron ended the twentieth century with a population of 45. More than half of the employed residents commuted to work in other towns.

Goltry, a rural community in far southeastern Alfalfa County, lies twenty miles southeast of Cherokee, the county seat. Through Goltry passes State Highway 45, by which Enid, the nearest city, is twenty miles to the east. Opened to non-Indian settlement in September 1893 as part of the Cherokee Outlet, the area was in Woods County until the creation of Alfalfa County at 1907 statehood. After the opening, a settlement called Karoma emerged on the John Streich farm, approximately one and one-half miles southeast of present Goltry. Among the township's early arrivals were a considerable number of Germans from Russia (ethnic Germans who had immigrated to the United States from homes in Russia), farmers by occupation. A number of other settlers hailed from the German state of Bohemia and from Switzerland. As late as 2000, 33 percent of the town's residents claimed to have German ancestry. Goltry owes its existence to the Arkansas Valley and Western Railway (later part of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, or Frisco, system), which in 1904 constructed a line from east to west across that part of Woods County that after 1907 was Alfalfa County. Karoma's townspeople moved most of their homes and businesses to the railroad. In 1904 a townsite company headed by John Linden surveyed and platted the town on 240 acres. The new community was incorporated and named for Enid resident Charles Goltry, who owned the land and whose milling company constructed a grain elevator there. James Hagemeier was appointed Goltry's postmaster in January 1904. At statehood, 183 people made Goltry their home. Rail access made the settlement a market center. By 1910 the town had 320 residents, two churches, a public school, a bank, and the Goltry News. An elevator, an implement dealer, and a grain dealer served area farmers, and residents enjoyed about a dozen retail establishments, a billiard parlor, and telephone connections. Hovering between two and three hundred throughout the twentieth century, the population peaked in 1930 at 346. Despite the economic depression of the 1930s the town prospered as a shipping and market center. Oil production in southeastern Alfalfa County began in the mid-1920s and bolstered Goltry's economy. Three oil producers/refiners constructed loading racks at the railroad siding there. During the 1930s the citizens approved a water system bond, secured a new community building, high school, and grade school, and constructed a public park. A slow decline brought the population to 330 in 1940, 313 in 1960, and 305 in 1980. During the 1940s and 1950s Goltry and the surrounding agricultural area, which produced wheat and livestock, supported eighteen businesses and a bank. Agriculture, petroleum, and the railroad sustained Goltry through the second half of the century. Wheat production primary, but nearby oil and gas production during the 1960s and 1970s boosted income. The town reincorporated in December 1974. In the 1990s residents supported five churches, a bank, a Farmers' Co-Op elevator, and a few businesses, and the consolidated Timberlake School District educated the youth of Helena, Jet, Nash, and Goltry. The Farmers' Exchange Elevator is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NR 83004156). In 2000 the town had a population of 268, down from 297 in 1990.

 Helena is a small incorporated town in the southeastern corner of Alfalfa County. Since the arrival of non-Indian settlers in September 1893, wheat farming has comprised the primary local economic activity. Alfalfa County was created from Woods County in 1907. Soon after the Cherokee Outlet opened, dispersed communities began to emerge in southwestern Woods County. A postal designation was received by Helen S. Monroe for Helena in June 1894. About four miles to the southwest, a settlement called Carwile coalesced. When the Arkansas Valley and Western Railway surveyed its route through the region, it bypassed Carwile and approached Helena. Several business enterprises moved nearer the proposed railway, where, circa 1896, H. H. Anderson had opened a store on John Neal's homestead. In 1902 the Northwestern Townsite Company, E. S. Wilhite, agent and former Carwile merchant, bought Neal's land, laid out the town about one-half mile from the existing store and post office, and in 1903 held a lot sale. A bank, the first enterprise to move from Carwile, opened in April 1903 and became the Helena State Bank. Soon, according to one observer, "almost the entire town of Carwile folded their tents and journeyed to the townsite of Helena" in August. In December 1903 voters chose to incorporate the village of 160 souls. On January 6, 1904, the Arkansas Valley and Western Railway (part of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway system) trackage reached Helena, and the line reached Carmen that year. By mid-1905 an estimated seven hundred residents supported two banks, two schools, and two newspapers. Farmers accessed four elevators, a flour mill, and two lumberyards. The census at 1907 statehood credited Helena with 521 inhabitants, a number that jumped to 760 in 1910. A portrait of Helena in 1909 would reveal Baptist, Christian, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, two banks, and three dozen prosperous businesses and service providers. The Woods County High School, one of only two in Oklahoma Territory at that time, occupied a $90,000 building constructed in 1903 and opened in 1904 for four hundred students. In 1910 the building became the campus of Connell State School of Agriculture, but in 1918 the state gave the building to the city for a public school. Helena's population hovered between six and seven hundred for the first four decades of the twentieth century, peaking in 1940 at 776. The Helena Free Press, the Helena Herald, and most recently the Helena Star have printed the news.  State government institutions have always bolstered the town's income. The Western Oklahoma State School for White Children, an orphanage, occupied the former high school building from 1923 through 1944. From 1945 to 1948 and from 1956 through mid-1982 the State Training School for Boys operated on the property, which adjoins Helena at the west corporate limits. Reconfigured in July 1982 as James Crabtree Correctional Center, a medium-security prison, the complex has housed more than eight hundred adult men offenders and continued in that function at the end of the twentieth century. In the 1990s the facility operated a farm and also maintained a quail hatchery for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. During the 1990s the prison's wild horse training program annually brought mustang owners and buyers to Helena. While other Alfalfa County towns lost railroad access in the 1930s and 1950s, Helena remained on the line of the Burlington-Northern Santa Fe Railway, successor to the Frisco. Nevertheless, the community experienced some of the decline typical of rural small towns of northwestern Oklahoma. Oil prospecting in the 1930s opened a small field that has continued to produce. During the 1940s and 1950s a bank and two dozen retail and wholesale businesses served operated. After the state school relocated, the population dropped to 580 in 1960, but its return prompted an increase to 769 in 1970 and to 710 in 1980. The advent of the prison complex boosted the count to 1,043 inhabitants in 1990. The consolidated Timberlake School District, serving 340 students from a wide geographical area in the corner of the county, placed its high school and one elementary school in Helena. In the mid-1990s residents operated two dozen retail businesses and a bank and attended five churches. Agriculture supported a Farmers' Co-op Association elevator. Living only twenty-six miles from Enid, some residents could commute to jobs there. Helena entered the twenty-first century with a population of 443.