Biohazard Cleanup Near North Arcadia Arcadia, OK

Arcadia is a town in Oklahoma County on historic Route 66, about 17 miles northeast of Oklahoma City, and its motto is "Unity - Pride - Commitment."

Arcadia was established soon after the Land Run of 1889 and was named after the Greek region of Arcadia, famed in mythology as an unspoiled rural paradise.

Arcadia drew both white and African American cotton farmers to the fertile Deep Fork River bottomland, and it remains a historically majority-Black town — African Americans were 45.6% of its population in 2020 and a majority in earlier censuses.

Arcadia's post office was established in 1890, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad built a line just south of town in 1902-03, turning Arcadia into an important regional cotton market.

A June 1924 fire destroyed most of Arcadia's business district; the one survivor, Tulon's Drugstore, is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Arcadia's most famous landmark is the Round Barn, built in 1898 by farmer William Harrison "Big Bill" Odor from green bur oak boards soaked and bent into curves — 60 feet in diameter and 43 feet tall, it is often described as the only truly round barn in America, and Odor reportedly hoped its round shape would let tornadoes slide around it.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the Round Barn's roof collapsed in 1988, but a volunteer group known as the "Over the Hill Gang" restored it by 1992, and it now draws roughly 40,000 visitors a year.

Just west of the Round Barn stands POPS 66, a Route 66 gas station, restaurant and "soda ranch" opened in 2007 by Chesapeake Energy founder Aubrey McClendon and named for his father; its roadside sign is a 66-foot-tall, four-ton soda bottle — the height honors Route 66 — and the store stocks more than 700 varieties of soda.

Arcadia voters resisted incorporation for decades and only incorporated in 1987, after the city of Edmond attempted to annex the community in 1984-85.

The 1907 statehood census counted 994 people in Arcadia, but the town has shrunk steadily since; the 2020 census counted 169 residents in 77 households.