OKAY — It was called Verdigris Landing, Three Forks, Coretta, Rex, North Muskogee and Falls City.

Then the O.K. 3-Ton Truck and Trailer Co. came along, and the town of Okay officially made a name for itself on Nov. 14, 1919.

Okay will mark its 90th anniversary with a combination birthday party and Halloween celebration Saturday. Festivities include a reading of an anniversary proclamation issued by Gov. Brad Henry, live music and games.

A booklet by historian Grant Foreman said white settlers first set up homes and a trading post at the westward crook of the Verdigris River in 1806. Retired Owens-Illinois glass worker Don Daniel recalled spending plenty of summers around the river bend.

“There was a falls below the one-lane bridge, and on Sunday afternoons — we didn’t have all these swimming areas like Sequoyah Bay — we’d come out to the falls,” Daniel said. “We’d see 75 to 80 cars come out there from Muskogee. That was the swimming beach for us back then.”

Daniel, 67, recalled the steam trains that passed through town every day.

“The postmistress, Geraldine Posey, would come up and hang the mail pouch on a pole and as the train came by, it had a hook that would get the pouch,” he said. “For the incoming mail, they’d throw the mail pouch on the ground.”

He said the steam train made such deliveries through the 1950s.

Back then, the only automobile access to Okay was the one-lane bridge, Daniel said.

“That was before the river was a navigation channel, and we didn’t have the high bridge,” he said.

When the “high bridge” on Oklahoma 16 was built in 1970, the Martin family, who had property where the new bridge crossed the Verdigris, was ready to take advantage of the traffic by setting up a fish market and restaurant, said Richard Martin, owner of Martin’s Restaurant.

“My grandfather had an offer to dad to build the fish market off the new highway, and I remember my dad drawing up plans for the restaurant on paper.”

Martin said he and his wife, Susan Martin, took over the restaurant in the early 1990s. Pictures from Okay’s history line the restaurant walls.

Many of those pictures are of the O.K. 3-Ton Truck and Trailer Co., which housed several businesses, said local historian Jack Crocker. He said that at various times in its history, the factory produced stoves, tractors and trucks. In 1928, it became an airplane factory and produced two monoplanes before it went out of business in the crash of 1929.

Kenneth Walker, 58, recalled Okay being a nice place to grow up.

“It had quiet neighborhoods, we’d ride our horses around town, along the river bank,” he said. “There wasn’t much back then. It had a drug store, a couple of convenience stores. But Okay has come a long way.”

Walker said his family goes back to Okay’s founding in 1919.

“We have 20 Walkers going to Okay School right now,” he said.

Ed Lasater was principal at Okay for 20 years, and recalled when the school burned.

“Back then we used to worry about kids running around in the halls with their shirt-tails out,” he said as he played dominoes with two other former Okay educators, Randall Cargill and Jim Hancock.

Lasater’s son, Mike Lasater, now is principal at Okay Elementary.



Reach Cathy Spaulding at 684-2928 or cspaulding@muskogeephoenix.com.



If you go

WHAT: Okay 90th birthday.

WHEN: Noon to 8 p.m. Saturday. Reading of Governor’s proclamation, 4 p.m.

WHERE: Downtown Okay.

FEATURES: Costume contest, pumpkin carving contest, games, food and craft vendors, live music by Chrome Molly, Highway 80 and Walker Family.