page_title: Enid, Oklahoma
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Enid, Oklahoma / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The front of the Garfield County Courthouse in Enid, Oklahoma.
context_page_description: Enid is the ninth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the county seat of Garfield County. As of the 2010 census, the population was 49,379. Enid was founded during the opening of the Cherokee Outlet in the Land Run of 1893, and is named after Enid, a character in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. In 1991, the Oklahoma state legislature designated Enid the "purple martin capital of Oklahoma." Enid holds the nickname of "Queen Wheat City" and "Wheat Capital" of Oklahoma and the United States for its immense grain storage capacity, and has the third-largest grain storage capacity in the world.
context_section_description: In summer 1889, M.A. Low, a Rock Island official, visited the local railroad station then under construction, and inquired about its name. At that time, it was called Skeleton. Disliking the original name, he renamed the station Enid after a character in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. However, a more fanciful story of how the town received its name is popular. According to that tale, in the days following the land run, some enterprising settlers decided to set up a chuckwagon and cook for their fellow pioneers, hanging a sign that read "DINE". Some other, more free-spirited settlers, turned that sign backward to read, of course, "ENID". The name stuck.
  During the opening of the Cherokee Outlet in the Land Run of 1893, Enid was the location of a land office which is now preserved in its Humphrey Heritage Village, part of the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center. Enid, the rail station, (now North Enid, Oklahoma) was the original town site endorsed by the government. It was platted by the surveyor W. D. Twichell, then of Amarillo, Texas.
    
  The Enid-Pond Creek Railroad War ensued when the Department of the Interior moved the government site 3 mi (5 km) south of the station prior to the land run, which was then called South Enid. During the run, due to the Rock Island's refusal to stop, people leaped from the trains to stake their claim in the government-endorsed site. By the afternoon of the run, Enid's population was estimated at 12,000 people located in the Enid's 80-acre (320,000 m²) town plat. Enid's original plat in 1893 was 6 blocks wide by 11 blocks long consisting of the town square on the northwest end, West Hill  (Jefferson) school on the southwest end, Government Springs Park in the middle southern section, and East Hill (Garfield) school on the far northeast corner. A year later, the population was estimated at 4,410, growing to 10,087 by 1907, the year of Oklahoma statehood.
  The town's early history was captured in Cherokee Strip: A Tale of an Oklahoma Boyhood by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marquis James, who recounts his boyhood in Enid.
  He writes of the early town:
  A trip to Enid was surely a marvelous treat, the stairways one saw being the very least of it. First off, on the edge of the prairie was a house here and house there--and not so many of them sod houses, either. Quite a few were even painted. Pretty soon the stores began, with the buildings touching each other and no front yards at all, only board sidewalks shaded by wooden awnings. Then you came to the Square. You never saw so many rigs or so many people.
  — Cherokee Strip: A Tale of an Oklahoma Boyhood
  Enid experienced a "golden age" following the discovery of oil in the region in the 1910s and continuing until World War II. Enid's economy boomed as a result of the growing oil, wheat, and rail industries, and its population grew steadily throughout the early 20th century in conjunction with a period of substantial architectural development and land expansion. Enid's downtown had the construction of several buildings including the Broadway Tower, Garfield County Courthouse, and Enid Masonic Temple. In conjunction with the oil boom, oilmen such as T. T. Eason, H. H. Champlin, and Charles E. Knox built homes in the area. Residential additions during this period include Kenwood, Waverley, Weatherly, East Hill, Kinser Heights, Buena Vista, and McKinley.  Union Equity, Continental, Pillsbury, General Mills, and other grain companies operated mills and grain elevators in the area, creating what is now the Enid Terminal Grain Elevators Historic District, and earning Enid the titles of "Wheat Capital of Oklahoma", "Queen Wheat City of Oklahoma," and "Wheat Capital of the United States"
caption: Enid is the county seat of Garfield County, and is home to the county courthouse.
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