Biohazard Cleanup Near West Delaware Delaware, OK

Delaware is a small town in central Nowata County in northeastern Oklahoma, just west of U.S. Highway 169, about six miles north of Nowata and eighteen miles south of the Kansas state line.

Delaware is not named for the state of Delaware: it honors the Eastern Delaware tribe, whose members moved into this area from Kansas after signing a treaty with the Cherokee Nation in 1867.

The townsite began in 1889, when the Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railroad built through the area and put in a switch it called Comana Switch.

The name Delaware became permanent when a post office was established under that name on March 19, 1898.

In 1901 Delaware consisted of just two houses surrounded by farmland, but the discovery of oil nearby in 1904 briefly turned it into a boomtown of about 4,000 people with businesses that included thirteen saloons.

Delaware's oil boom collapsed almost as fast as it rose: by November 1907 the population had crashed to 108, the lowest figure in the town's history.

Delaware's highest official census count was 804 in 1920, and its population has generally declined since then.

The 2020 census counted 267 people in Delaware, a steep drop of about 36 percent from the 417 residents recorded in 2010.

Delaware remains an agricultural community on rolling prairie just west of the Verdigris River, and its town limits cover only about 0.4 square miles.