Oklahoma City's Post Office Was Just "Oklahoma" Until 1923

Oklahoma City’s post office didn’t carry the name Oklahoma City until 1923. Before that, the mail went to plain “Oklahoma,” the same Choctaw-born name the territory and later the state carried.

First it was a station

The first name on the post office records is “Oklahoma Station.” The Chronicles of Oklahoma ran the old post office lists in several parts in 1928, and the June issue gives Samuel H. Radebaugh as the first postmaster of Oklahoma Station, with the note “Changed to Oklahoma.” The very next entry is Oklahoma, same postmaster, marked “Late Oklahoma Station.”

George H. Shirk’s list of the first post offices in Oklahoma, printed in the same journal in 1952, puts dates on it: Oklahoma Station opened on December 30, 1887, and became plain Oklahoma on December 18, 1888. A short note in the Chronicles in 1936 adds that postmaster James McGranahan handed the office over to G. A. Beidler at 10 a.m. on Sunday, April 21, 1889, the day before the land run. So the post office was there before the land-run settlers were.

Where “Oklahoma” came from

The town didn’t invent the word. Henry Gannett’s The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, published by the U.S. Geological Survey, lumps the territory, the county and the city together under one entry. The 1905 edition says: “A Choctaw Indian word meaning ‘red people.’” You can read how a Choctaw delegate came up with it in 1866 in our story of the state’s name.

Gannett’s book didn’t always agree with itself, though. The first edition, in 1902, gave the same three places a different meaning: “An Indian word, meaning ‘home for all Indians.’” Three years later the Survey printed “red people” instead.

Adding “City” in 1923

People called the place Oklahoma City long before the post office did. Historian Berlin B. Chapman found an Army clerk writing “Oklahoma City” as early as October 1889, and the Santa Fe railroad renamed its station Oklahoma City on December 1, 1901. Shirk’s list dates the post office’s change to July 1, 1923, and Chapman says it came “by order of the Postmaster General.” Even then, envelopes kept getting postmarked “Oklahoma” for several weeks. Shirk owned one dated September 14.

You can see how long the gap was on the map at the top of this page. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 1893 sheet already labels the town OKLAHOMA CITY, right beside the Santa Fe tracks. The post office took 30 more years to say the same thing.

Sources & further reading

• Chronicles of Oklahoma, “Early Post Offices of Oklahoma” (June 1928). Oklahoma Station, its first postmaster Samuel H. Radebaugh, and the change to Oklahoma.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1902), p. 196. The first edition’s “home for all Indians.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 2nd ed. (USGS, 1905), p. 230. “A Choctaw Indian word meaning ‘red people.’”
• George H. Shirk, “First Post Offices Within the Boundaries of Oklahoma,” Chronicles of Oklahoma (1952), p. 83. Oklahoma Station in 1887, Oklahoma in 1888 and Oklahoma City on July 1, 1923.
• Berlin B. Chapman, “Oklahoma City, from Public Land to Private Property,” Chronicles of Oklahoma (1959), p. 216. The Postmaster General’s order of 1923, the railroad’s 1901 name change and the late “Oklahoma” postmarks.
• Chronicles of Oklahoma, “First Postmaster at Oklahoma” (1936). James McGranahan handing the office to G. A. Beidler on April 21, 1889.
• GNIS feature 1102140 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Oklahoma City, capital of the state.