Biohazard Cleanup Near North Clearview Clearview, OK

Clearview is an incorporated town in Okfuskee County, and it is one of only thirteen All-Black towns still existing in Oklahoma, out of more than fifty that were founded in the state.

Clearview was founded in 1903 along the tracks of the Fort Smith and Western Railroad, when J. A. Roper, Lemuel Jackson, and John Grayson platted the townsite and formed the Lincoln Townsite Company to attract settlers.

Clearview sits eight miles southeast of Okemah, the Okfuskee County seat, and its post office opened in 1902, a year before the town itself was platted.

Clearview's population reached 618 in 1907, but the Great Depression and falling cotton prices cut it to about 420 by the late 1930s.

The 2020 census counted just 41 residents in Clearview, down from 48 in 2010 and 56 in 2000.

Clearview covers only about 0.17 square miles, and the 2010 census recorded just 28 housing units in the whole town.

Around nine in ten of Clearview's residents are Black or African American, according to Census Bureau survey data, reflecting the town's founding as an All-Black settlement.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the small community still hosted an annual rodeo, a tradition noted by the Oklahoma Historical Society.