24/7 Trauma & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Crowder Crowder, OK

Crowder is a town in Pittsburg County in southeastern Oklahoma, about fifteen miles northeast of McAlester near U.S. Highway 69.

The town grew up where the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway — which built through the Choctaw Nation in 1872 — crossed a Fort Smith and Western Railway line, in what was then Tobucksy County of the Choctaw Nation.

Dr. William Edgar Crowder, a physician and the uncle of Will Rogers's wife Betty, owned the 160 acres where the two railroads met and platted the land into some seven hundred lots.

Crowder was originally named Juanita, after Dr. Crowder's wife Juanita Harlan, and a post office opened under that name on March 21, 1902, before the town was renamed Crowder on June 4, 1904.

By 1920 Crowder had 581 residents and a thriving business district with hotels and a bank, and it was served at times by two local newspapers, the Crowder City Advertiser and the Crowder City Guardian.

A tornado in 1949 destroyed fourteen of Crowder's businesses, and when U.S. Highway 69 was rebuilt as a four-lane road in the early 1960s, it in effect bypassed the town.

The development of nearby Lake Eufaula has brought tourist dollars to Crowder, and the Crowder Point Campground serves campers, boaters and anglers on the lake.

The 2020 census counted 306 people in Crowder, down from 430 in 2010, as the old railroad-crossroads town has steadily shrunk from its 1920 size.

Crowder is served by its own public school district, Crowder Public Schools, whose elementary school teaches roughly three hundred children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.