Biohazard Cleanup Near West Davis Davis, OK

Davis is a city mostly in Murray County in south-central Oklahoma, named for Samuel H. Davis, a dry-goods merchant who moved to the Chickasaw Nation in 1887; the town was formally established on November 16, 1898.

The 2020 census counted 2,823 people in Davis.

Davis owns one of Oklahoma's most famous natural attractions: Turner Falls Park in the Arbuckle Mountains, which town voters agreed to buy for $21,000 back in 1925, and the falls remain inside the city limits even though they sit about five miles south of downtown.

Turner Falls, named for pioneer resident and state legislator Mazeppa Turner, drops 77 feet into a natural swimming pool and is among the tallest waterfalls in Oklahoma.

The Arbuckle Mountains surrounding Davis are an ancient range whose oldest rocks are roughly 1.4 billion years old, among the oldest exposed formations in the continental United States.

By 1900, just two years after it was established, Davis bustled with 57 businesses, two banks, ten doctors, three dentists and three lawyers, thanks to its position at the heart of one of Oklahoma's best cotton-producing districts.

About eight miles west of Davis stands Oklahoma's Initial Point, the survey marker from which all of Oklahoma except the Panhandle was laid out, near the site of old Fort Arbuckle; both the Initial Point and the Davis Santa Fe Depot are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Davis is the closest town to the Lake of the Arbuckles, about seven miles northwest, and sits eight miles west of Sulphur, the Murray County seat.

The Davis Museum, run by the Arbuckle Historical Society, preserves local collections on schools, churches, medicine, the railroad and farm life.

Davis's economy has shifted over time from cotton farming to education, health and social services, which employ about a quarter of its workforce.