Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Ada Ada, OK

Ada is the county seat of Pontotoc County in south-central Oklahoma, located about twelve miles south of the Canadian River on U.S. Highway 377.

Ada was named for Ada Reed, the oldest daughter of early settler and mail carrier Jeff Reed; a post office bearing her name was established on July 10, 1891.

The Ada townsite was first settled in the late 1880s by the Daggs family from Texas, and the prairie settlement was originally known as Daggs Prairie.

Ada incorporated as a city on April 1, 1901, and its first newspaper, the Ada Star, began circulation the very next day.

Ada grew rapidly after the arrival of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, which turned the small settlement into a regional trade center.

Ada is the capital and headquarters of the Chickasaw Nation, which opened its headquarters in the city in 1975.

Ada is home to East Central University, founded in 1909 as East Central College after the women of Ada organized a campaign to bring a state normal school to their town.

East Central University serves roughly 4,500 students and is known internationally for its cartography program, one of only a few such programs in existence.

Ada had a population of 16,481 in the 2020 census, and at the 2010 census its 16,810 residents lived in 6,697 households.

Ada is the birthplace of Robert S. Kerr, Oklahoma's first native-born governor and a longtime U.S. senator, as well as evangelist Oral Roberts.