OKGenWeb Project

Stephens County, Oklahoma was formed in 1907 from part of territorial Comanche County and part of the former Chickasaw Nation. It was established by members of the Constitutional Convention with the county seat being Duncan. R. J. Allen of Duncan was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and chairman of the county committee of the convention. He managed to have Stephens County formed as a large county with Duncan lying very near the center.
Stephens county contains 891 square miles of land. It is 27 miles wide (north to south) and 33 miles long (east to west). A strip of land 9 miles wide and 27 miles long lying on the western border of the county was originally part of the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache Reservations in Oklahoma Territory, this strip of land lies west of the 98th Meridian. The 98th Meridian divided Oklahoma Territory from Indian Territory. All the land in Stephens County which lies east of the 98th Meridian was formerly part of Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory.
Stephens County takes it's name from John Stephens, a congressman from Amarillo, Texas who strongly supported Oklahoma's push for statehood.
The first known permanent white settlement was established by a Mr. Silas (Buck) Fitzpatrick who moved from Fort Arbuckle in about 1865 and established a ranch on the north side of Lake Duncan. Within a couple of years he was joined by his father. The father, Mr. Theodore Fitzpatrick moved from Fort Arbuckle to a location about 2 miles northeast of Duncan on Cow Creek. Here he established a store on the newly formed Chisholm Trail. In about 1871 or 1872 Mr. Theodore Fitzpatrick sold his store to William Duncan. William Duncan was an intermarried Chickasaw, his wife Sally Fraker was a white teacher who had been adopted by the Chickasaw and as such was considered a Chickasaw and entitled to receive land allotments . In 1890 when they learned that the railroad would be coming through land approximately 2 miles from their current location they claimed the land which would become the railroad right-of-way as their allotment land. Thus establishing the town which carries his name, Duncan.
In 1892 the Rock Island Railroad opened their line which connected the three major communities of what would become Stephens County, Comanche, Duncan, and Marlow.
Marlow community was established in the 1880s and was originally known as Marlow Grove, taking its name from the Marlow family. Marlow has obtained much notoriety on the fact that the founding Marlow brothers were cattle rustlers.
Even before statehood the livelihood of the Stephens County area was shifting from ranching and farming to oil production. As early as 1903, a shallow oil well was drilled near Cruces, a small community in the county. By 1918, the Duncan Chamber of Commerce started to plan the construction of a road "west to the oil fields."
Duncan, it is said, is the "Buckle in the Oil Belt."
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Stephens county was formed from the following pre-statehood territories:
Comanche County and Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory