Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Coalgate, OK

Coalgate is the county seat and largest city of Coal County in southeastern Oklahoma.

Coalgate was founded in 1889 in the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, as a coal mining camp named Liddle, after William 'Bill' Liddle, an Atoka Coal and Mining Company superintendent who arrived in the fall of 1888 to locate a site for a new coal mine.

Work on the mine started on January 2, 1889, and the first shipment of coal left Liddle on April 17, 1889.

The town's name changed to Coalgate on January 23, 1890, taken from the steel 'coal gate' that separated the trains from the coal mines north of town.

By 1899 Coalgate had eight operating coal mines and was shipping about twenty-eight carloads of coal daily.

Coalgate incorporated under the laws of Arkansas on November 25, 1898, and its first mayor was Peter Hanraty, who went on to become Oklahoma's chief mine inspector.

Coal County was created at statehood in 1907 with Lehigh as its seat, but a special election on June 2, 1908 moved the seat to Coalgate — an election in which 2,544 ballots were cast although only 2,329 voters were registered, a result Lehigh challenged but no court would hear.

Coalgate was the site of the very first bank closing performed by the State of Oklahoma: the International Bank of Coalgate was closed on May 21, 1908, and its depositors were paid off in full.

On June 1, 1917, an F4 tornado struck Coalgate, destroying the Westward school building and more than 200 homes and killing at least 11 people.

Coalgate's population peaked at 3,255 in 1910 during the coal boom; the mines closed in the early 1920s because of worker strikes, briefly reopened during World War II, and closed for good by 1958.