Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Colony, OK

Colony is a town in northeastern Washita County named for the Seger Colony, an experimental Native American farming settlement founded in 1886.

John Seger, an Ohio native and Union veteran of the Civil War who had worked at the Darlington Agency since 1872, persuaded about 120 Cheyenne and Arapaho people to settle and farm along Cobb Creek.

Seger's colony taught modern agricultural methods and brick-making, and within a year it had grown to more than 500 inhabitants.

By 1892 the colony had built an industrial arts school, the Seger Indian School, with Native students making the bricks and cutting the stone for its buildings.

The Dutch Reformed Church opened a mission at the colony in 1895; the mission closed in 1912 and the Seger Indian School itself closed in 1932.

After the Cheyenne-Arapaho Land Run of April 19, 1892, settlers laid out a townsite about four miles west of the school, first with a post office called Seger and then, in 1896, one named Colony, which the town adopted as its name.

Colony had an estimated population of about 300 by 1911.

Colony hosts the annual Cheyenne and Arapaho Labor Day Powwow, a homecoming celebration held in the town since the end of World War II.

The 2020 census counted 112 residents in Colony, down from 136 in 2010.