Volume 6 , Issue 12

Okie's NW Corner

With Spring just around the corner - Daylight Saving Time creeping upon us in the near future, April 4 -- Spring-like weather hanging around... we have been hitting the rural roads, highways of NW Oklahoma. Last week we went exploring for a small community that will celebrate it's 100th birthday in six years (2010). That community is Elm Flat, Major County, Oklahoma. It is located between Aline & Cleo Springs.

What brought this exploring on was a letter we received by-way of snail-mail last weekend from the "Oldest Living Kid" of Elm Flat, Oklahoma. You are probably asking, "Where is Elm Flat?" That is exactly what this writer asked herself as our travels last Sunday took us into the countryside of Woods, Major County somewhere in between Aline, Cleo Springs on a dirt road where we finally got our memory jogged a bit. Yes! We have been there before! BUT... like most places we have seen, researched and put upon on our website... Elm Flat got lost in the mounds of photos, histories accumulated over the past six years for our Okie Legacy journal. We finally find Elm Flat when we went west of Aline, Oklahoma 4 miles -- turned south onto a rural dirt road for another 4 miles. There at the junction of two dirt road crossings sat the Elm Flat Christian Church and some weathered, worn buildings (that have seen better days and lots of history). Do you have any photos, memories of Elm Flat, Oklahoma to share?

Elm Flat will celebrate it's 100th birthday in 6 years. It was established with the school in 1910. That school building sits on the Southeast corner and is now used as the Elm Flat Christian church, in Major county, Oklahoma.

On the Northeast corner stands some well-weathered old buildings that have seen quite a bit of history -- according to Alvin Wilcox. Alvin (the oldest living kid of Elm Flat) now resides in Cleo Springs with his wife. He wrote me that he was the owner of that old building across the road from the old school/church. Wilcox's aged old building has seen lots of tenants, businesses and histories pass through its doors. It's been known as a grocery store and filling station as well as a home for several different people. At one time it was a duplex (one family lived in the basement and one family lived up on the ground level). If you look on the eastside of the old building you can catch a glimpse of what remains of the basement.

You can also see a photo of an Aline, Oklahoma old building that stands beside a filling station in Aline. The west wall of this old building has a "List of Defenders of Our Flag" painted on it. We have transcribed that list to a "rtf-file" for easier reading for some of you out there. Some names we had trouble reading and have put "(?)" beside them. Maybe someone out there can help us decipher them.

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