Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Altus, OK

Altus is a city in southwestern Oklahoma and the county seat of Jackson County, with a population of 18,729 at the 2020 census.

The town began in 1886 as Frazer, a settlement of about 50 people on Bitter Creek that served as a trading post on the Great Western Cattle Trail, where cowboys driving herds north often stopped to buy buttermilk from John McClearan, earning it the local nickname "Buttermilk Station."

A flash flood nearly destroyed Frazer on June 4, 1891, so residents moved 2.5 miles east to higher ground and renamed the town Altus, the Latin word for "high."

Altus won an 1908 election against Olustee, 2,077 votes to 1,365, to become the permanent Jackson County seat, and the county courthouse was built in 1910.

The city's population doubled between Oklahoma statehood in 1907 and the 1910 census, and Altus unusually kept growing even during the Great Depression.

Altus Air Force Base, just east of the city, was activated in 1943 as Altus Army Airfield to train multi-engine pilots during World War II.

Today Altus AFB is home to the 97th Air Mobility Wing and is the Air Force's formal training base for C-17 Globemaster III, KC-135 Stratotanker and KC-46 Pegasus aircrews, training more than 2,000 air mobility students a year, including students from other nations.

Altus AFB provides direct employment for about 2,000 civilian personnel, and the base community makes up roughly a quarter of the local population.

An irrigation project in the 1940s, together with the wartime airfield, drove further growth in Altus during the mid-twentieth century.

Altus is home to Western Oklahoma State College, which traces its beginnings to a municipal junior college opened in 1926, and to the Southwest Technology Center.