Thank you to all who visited the Community Coffee on the porch of the TB Ferguson Home Museum last week. There was a good turnout, and a number of persons took a tour of the home and jail. Representatives of the city and our U.S. Representative in Washington were present.
Did you know there was a town in Blaine County named after our esteemed governor of Oklahoma Territory, TB Ferguson? The town of Ferguson was located NW of Hitchcock on the Salt Creek 12 miles north of Watonga. It had a post office from 1901 to 1920 (George Shirk; Oklahoma Place Names, 1974). This was one of several towns established by African Americans in Oklahoma including at least three towns in Blaine County. Others in Blaine county are located west of Greenfield (Udora or Eudora) and west of Watonga (Emanuel) https://www.okhistory.o rg/. OETA television has articles on some of better known African American towns.
The town of Ferguson was originally Salton. “Jesse Chisholm produced salt in future Blaine County to trade with Plains Indians. Later, Jeff Saunders operated a salt works in that region, southeast of Southard, and the site is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NR 83002074). After the turn of the twentieth century Blaine County salt plants emerged at Salton, later Ferguson”. (Oklahomahistory.org ) Naming a town after TB Ferguson is just one of the ways that Gov. Ferguson was honored for his service in Oklahoma Territory.