Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Albion, OK

Albion is a town in northeastern Pushmataha County, on U.S. Highway 271 about two miles south of the Latimer County line.

Before Oklahoma statehood, Albion stood in Wade County of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory, and its United States post office opened on December 6, 1887, with Charles F. Igo as the first postmaster.

Albion was named by John T. Bailey, an Englishman, who chose the ancient poetic name for England when the town was platted and incorporated in 1906.

Albion began as a sawmill town after the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway (the Frisco) built through the Choctaw Nation in 1885–86, and its site was picked for its proximity to the Kiamichi River's abundant water supply.

In its heyday the Frisco ran six trains a day through Albion — three in each direction — but passenger service ended in the late 1950s and the railroad closed entirely and removed its rails in 1981.

Albion's business district was built around a town square ringed by homes, and its population peaked at 301 residents in the 1920 census.

The 2020 census counted just 58 people in Albion, living in 35 households, with a median age of 47.5 years — a drop of more than 80 percent from its 1920 peak.

Albion was the home for 28 years of Mato Kosyk, a Lutheran minister who emigrated from Lower Lusatia, Germany, in 1883 and became one of the most significant writers in the Sorbian Slavic language; he moved to Albion in 1912 for its healthy climate and Kiamichi Mountain views and died there in 1940.

The Mato Kosyk House in Albion, entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, is the only surviving structure associated with the poet, and the historic Albion State Bank building is also National Register-listed.

Planners of the proposed State of Sequoyah in 1905 wanted Albion as the southernmost town of their Wade County, but instead it became the northeasternmost town of Pushmataha County when Oklahoma was admitted instead.