Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Bernice, OK

Bernice is a town in Delaware County, Oklahoma, on the shore of Grand Lake o' the Cherokees, and it bills itself as the "Crappie Fishing Capital of the World."

Bernice was founded in 1912 after Rose Mode and his partner Charles Lee bought 60 acres of land in the Horse Creek Basin of northwestern Delaware County, and the town was named for Mode's daughter, Bernice.

A post office was established at Bernice on February 12, 1913, and the town quickly became a local agricultural center with a bank, a grain elevator, a sawmill, a hotel, a flour mill and three general stores.

By 1918 Bernice had an estimated population of nearly 400 people, but it shrank after World War I and the Great Depression, falling to just 91 residents by 1950.

Construction of the Pensacola Dam, which created Grand Lake, put the original townsite of Bernice in a flood plain, so the town's residents moved to high ground outside the proposed lake.

Today Bernice is primarily a vacation and retirement community on Grand Lake, and Indian Hills Resort, established in 1940, is the oldest recreational business in town.

The Bernice Area at Grand Lake State Park, about half a mile east of town across the Neosho River, draws vacationers to the lake shore.

The 2020 census counted 422 people in Bernice living in 211 households, down from a modern peak of 562 in 2010.

Bernice is an older community — the 2020 census put the median age at 57.7 years, with about a third of residents aged 65 or older.

Reflecting its lake-retirement character, about 40 percent of Bernice's housing units stood vacant at the 2020 census, many of them seasonal lake homes.