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

Davidson is a town in southwestern Tillman County, Oklahoma, located at the junction of U.S. Highways 70 and 183, on land opened to homesteading by the 1901 lottery in the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Opening.

According to the Tillman County Historical Society, Davidson was the first town in Tillman County, laid out as a government townsite when the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway built north from Texas across the Red River.

A post office called Olds opened at the site on May 21, 1902, and on June 20, 1903, the name was changed to Davidson in honor of A. J. Davidson, a railroad director from St. Louis, though the town government was not formally organized until 1916.

Agriculture built Davidson: at its height the town supported five cotton gins and three grain elevators, along with movie theaters, newspapers, saloons, livery stables, blacksmith shops, cafes, bakeries and drug stores.

Davidson's population peaked at 572 in 1930, and farming remains the area's economic base today, with a local cooperative running the one grain elevator that survives.

The 2020 census counted 241 residents in Davidson, down from 315 in 2010 and 375 in 2000, living in 107 households within the town's half square mile.

About 35 percent of Davidson's 2020 population was Hispanic or Latino, one of the higher shares for a small town in southwestern Oklahoma.

Rail service to Davidson was discontinued in the 1980s, and the town suffered a minor flood in 1995.

About 11 miles east-northeast of Davidson lies the Hackberry Flat Wildlife Management Area, a restored wetland of some 7,120 acres, including about 3,500 acres that can be flooded for waterfowl habitat using water piped in from Tom Steed Reservoir.