Kansas, Oklahoma

Kansas the town is much closer to Arkansas than it is to Kansas the state. Kansas the town is in Delaware County, the second Oklahoma county south of Kansas the state, but right up against the Arkansas state line.

Kansas’ population in 2010 was 802. Demographic makeup was 46.42% Native American; 45.84% White; 0.15% Pacific Islander; 0.15% from other races; and 7.45% from two or more races.

Just wondering: How does one become part of “two or more” races? If someone is, and somebody else asks, “Are you black, brown, red, white or yellow?”, does he answer, “I am two or more races.”? Maybe I’ll start checking that box when the 2020 census forms come around. Probably, the Census Bureau would call me on it and tell me I checked “White” in 2010. If so, I’ll just say, “I changed my mind.”

Darrell Winfield, aka “The Marlboro Man” was born in Kansas in 1929. He died in Riverton, Wyo., in 2015, six months before his 86th birthday.

Even though Kansas is in Delaware County, that part of the country was the Cherokee Nation.

Here is a link to a satellite image: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1698667,-94.7701752,4095m/data=!3m1!1e3

In the Flint Creek area, southeast of town, there are lots of roads running along the ridgelines, but few houses. Somebody expects growth. That expectation might not be too far from reality. Kansas had its largest-ever population in 2010. The previous high was 685, in 2000.

Why is a small town in Oklahoma called Kansas?

“There are several versions of the way in which Kansas received its name. One claims that the town was named after a popular housewares peddler from Kansas City, Kansas. A second asserts that so many of the town's inhabitants migrated from Kansas that they named their town after the state. Census records do not bear this out. Regardless, Kansas existed as a thriving boomtown while still a part of the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.

“On December 2, 1902, the federal government chose Tom Caywood and A. K. Wright to plat the town. The government paid the Cherokee Nation twenty-five dollars for the forty-five-acre town site. At the end of the twentieth century the actual city limits encompassed more than five square miles.

“Early businesses included two general stores, hardware and drug stores, a gristmill, sawmill, pool hall, hotel, rooming house, print shop, the Cherokee Land Company, a doctor, and a dentist. Many of these concerns were in operation before 1906. Two short-lived newspapers served Kansas: the Cherokee Hummer, from 1906, and the Delaware Tribune, from 1910. In 1911 there were an estimated two hundred residents. In 1930 the census showed 22. The next available census figures indicate a population of 317 in 1970.”

http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=KA002