History Of Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
Pontotoc County was created in 1907 from part of the old
Chickasaw Nation. The county name honored Chief Pontotoc, and meant
"Cattails growing on the prairie" and located in the southeastern part of
Oklahoma.
As determined by members of the Constitutional Convention, the county seat
was Ada, which had been established in 1893 by Jeff Reed, a Texas cowboy
who named the town after his daughter.
It was the site of a federal courthouse and the seat of Recording District
16 in the Indian Territory.
The first railroad entered Ada in 1900 and by 1904 the population exceeded
3,000. In 1997 population estimated 34,931 with 15,820 living in Ada, 972
in Allen , 717 in Roff, and 519 in Stonewall.
Ada was the town in which "Killin' Jim" Miller was lynched April 19, 1909
for the killing of a Pontotoc Co. rancher, A.A. "Gus" Bobbitt. Killin' Jim's
most famous victim was Pat Garrett, whom Miller supposedly bushwhacked in
1908.
The area of the county is seven hundred and twenty-eight
square miles, with approximately 465,920 acres, or a little less than
one-half million acres. It contains seventeen townships and a portion of six
others.
Ada is almost exactly in the center from east to west; there are fourteen
miles on each side to the county line. It is eighteen miles to the southern
boundary and to the north, six miles to the Canadian River.
The county is drained by the Canadian, Clear Boggy, Muddy Boggy, Little and
Big Blue Rivers, and their tributaries. The main tributary of the Canadian
is Sandy, which with its tributaries drain the western and north central
part of the county. The eastern and southern parts of the county are drained
by Muddy Boggy, Clear Boggy, and Big and Little Blue Rivers. The Canadian
River and its tributaries drain north and west of a line drawn from Allen to
Ada to Roff.
