About Us:

Woodward was established in 1887 at the junction of the Fort Reno Military Road and the Southern Kansas Railway (a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad) on the south bank of the North Canadian River. It soon became an important shipping point, both for provisioning Fort Supply and as a place for loading cattle grazed in the Cherokee Outlet. Before statehood, Woodward was one of the most extensive cattle shipping points in Oklahoma Territory. The Great Western Cattle Trail crossed where Woodward now stands.

More than fifty thousand individuals and families settled across the old Cherokee Outlet of northern Oklahoma on September 16, 1893 in the greatest land run in American history. The settlers founded cities that day from Woodward all the way to Enid, Oklahoma and Ponca City, Oklahoma. In the summer of 1893, carpenters erected the first government building at the railroad depot called Woodward. By that time, Woodward had approximately 200 residents. Before statehood to the present, Woodward has served as the county seat of Woodward County, Oklahoma.

Woodward, like Dodge City, Kansas to the North, boasted the usual array of saloons, gambling halls, and brothels established to separate the lonely cowboy from his hard-earned money. Woodward's Equity, Midway, Shamrock, and Cabinet saloons, and Dew Drop Inn, were widely known as watering holes for drovers at the end of a cattle drive. The latter, which also served as a brothel, was owned and managed by Miss Dollie Kezer. Before her arrival in Woodward, Miss Dollie worked at some of Denver, Colorado's most famous brothels, attended lavish parties thrown by Horace Tabor, and thought of herself as a rival to his wife, Elizabeth "Baby Doe" Tabor.

In its early years, Woodward was home to Temple Lea Houston, the son of Texas revolutionary Samuel Houston, and Jack E. Love. It was in Woodward's Cabinet Saloon, that Houston, a gun-slinging lawyer, shot the brother of the outlaw Al Jennings after a personal disagreement with Jennings' brother and father. His close friend, Jack E. Love, joined Houston in the gun-fight. Houston was tried for murder but was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Love was later elected to the office of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and served as its first chairman.

Houston, who won a reputation as a brilliant trial lawyer known for his courtroom dramatics, delivered his famous Soiled Dove Plea in Woodward's first courthouse. The argument, made on behalf of a prostitute who worked at the Dew Drop Inn, resulted in her acquittal after ten minutes. Houston served as the inspiration for the character Yancey Cravat in Edna Ferber's book Cimarron, and the booming frontier town described in the book is easily recognized as the town in which Houston lived: Woodward. Houston is buried in Woodward's Elmwood Cemetery.

On September 7, 1907, William Jennings Bryan spoke to 20,000 people gathered in Woodward and urged the ratification of Oklahoma's proposed constitution and the election of a democratic ticket. Two months later the proclamation admitting Oklahoma as a state was signed by Theodore Roosevelt with the quill from an American Golden Eagle captured near Woodward.