Home |  PublicationsEncyclopedia |  Wanette

The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

WANETTE.

Located in Pottawatomie County, Wanette is approximately thirty miles south of Shawnee and one mile south of State Highway 39 on State Highway 102. In 1868 Joseph and Catherine Bergeron Mellot moved from Kansas and established one of the first homes in the area, a two-story cabin about one and one-half miles from the present townsite. In 2003 the cabin still existed. In 1876 the Potawatomi gave some of their reservation lands to the Benedictine Order of the Roman Catholic Church, and Father Isidore Robot established the Sacred Heart Mission nearby. The town went through several name changes and moves before the name Wanette was established when the post office opened on March 19, 1894. During the Territorial Era outlaws Belle Starr (Myra Maybelle Shirley Starr) and Cole Younger frequented the area. In 1903 the town moved one mile north when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built a line from Newkirk to Pauls Valley.

In the early 1900s several newspapers including the Wanette Winner and the Wanette Times competed for readership. Three cotton gins, a brick kiln, several wagonyards, a livery, and a harness shop were among the early establishments. Two banks existed before 1907 statehood. In 1907 the population stood at 739. Initially cotton, and then oil, provided the bases for the local economy. In 1920, when the population peaked at 783, ten thousand bales of cotton were shipped from Wanette. During the 1930s the Wanette-Asher oil field boosted the economy. The population declined after the 1940 census, which counted 665 residents. The local agricultural region also produced pecans, oats, corn, alfalfa, and hay. At the turn of the twenty-first century Wanette was an agricultural support center and a "bedroom" community for Moore, Norman, and Oklahoma City. The town had 402 residents in 2000 and 350 in 2010. The April 2020 census reported a population of 278.

Beverly Mosman

Browse By Topic

Urban Development

Explore

Place
Town

Learn More

John Forston, Pott County and What Has Come of It: A History of Pottawatomie County (Shawnee, Okla.: Pottawatomie County Historical Society, 1936).

Charles W. Mooney, Localized History of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, to 1907 (Midwest City, Okla: Thunderbird Industries, 1971).

Pottawatomie County History Book Committee, comp. and ed., Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma History (Claremore, Okla.: Country Lane Press, 1987).

"Wanette," Vertical File, Research Division, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City.

Citation

The following (as per The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition) is the preferred citation for articles:
Beverly Mosman, “Wanette,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=WA017.

Published January 15, 2010
Last updated March 29, 2024

Copyright and Terms of Use

No part of this site may be construed as in the public domain.

Copyright to all articles and other content in the online and print versions of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History is held by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS). This includes individual articles (copyright to OHS by author assignment) and corporately (as a complete body of work), including web design, graphics, searching functions, and listing/browsing methods. Copyright to all of these materials is protected under United States and International law.

Users agree not to download, copy, modify, sell, lease, rent, reprint, or otherwise distribute these materials, or to link to these materials on another web site, without authorization of the Oklahoma Historical Society. Individual users must determine if their use of the Materials falls under United States copyright law's "Fair Use" guidelines and does not infringe on the proprietary rights of the Oklahoma Historical Society as the legal copyright holder of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and part or in whole.