24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Catoosa, OK

Catoosa is a city in Rogers and Wagoner counties in northeastern Oklahoma, located about 14 miles northeast of Tulsa on historic Route 66, with more than 7,400 residents at the 2020 census.

The Cherokee Nation controlled the Catoosa area for most of the nineteenth century, and the town's name is derived from the Cherokee language.

After the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad laid tracks through the area in 1881-82, Catoosa became a cow town shipping cattle east; a federal post office opened in 1883, and the town had 241 residents by 1900.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Catoosa businesses such as the Catoosa Indian Trading Post catered to travelers on U.S. Highway 66, the "Mother Road."

Catoosa's economy was transformed in 1971 when the Tulsa Port of Catoosa opened just north of town as the northern end of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System; President Richard M. Nixon traveled to Catoosa to dedicate the port that June.

The Port of Catoosa is one of the farthest inland seaports in the United States, linking the Tulsa area by barge to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, and its roughly 2,000-acre industrial park supports thousands of jobs.

By 1985, some fifteen million tons of freight had already traveled through the Port of Catoosa.

Catoosa's most famous landmark is the Blue Whale, an 80-foot-long concrete whale built in the early 1970s by Hugh Davis as an anniversary gift for his wife Zelta, who collected whale figurines; it was the centerpiece of a roadside attraction called the ARK (Animal Reptile Kingdom) and was restored in 1996.

Catoosa was the home of Bluford "Blue" Duck, the Cherokee outlaw whose story was depicted in the novel and miniseries Lonesome Dove; he is buried in the town's Dick Duck Cemetery.

Long a Tulsa bedroom community, Catoosa's population grew from just 638 in 1960 to 7,151 in 2010 as the port and suburban growth drew residents.