Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Devol Devol, OK

Devol is a town in Cotton County, Oklahoma, just north of U.S. Highway 70/State Highway 36, about six miles southeast of Grandfield and seven miles northwest of Randlett in Oklahoma's far southwest, near the Red River.

The town was named for J. Fiske Devol, who owned the land before the community was developed, and it began in 1907 when the Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railway laid tracks through the area; a post office followed on November 30, 1907.

The railroad became part of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas (the Katy) in 1911, and by that year Devol had grown to about 400 residents with a bank, a newspaper, retail stores, restaurants, a hotel and many cattle brokers.

Discovery of the nearby Burkburnett oil field in Texas in 1918 set off a brief boom: refineries were built around Devol, including the Constantine Refining Company, pipelines crossed the Red River to town, and oil-field workers who wanted to live away from rowdier oil towns swelled the population.

The 1920 census counted 1,936 people in Devol — its all-time peak — and the town boasted the first dynamo in the area, used to power one of its two dance halls.

The boom ended about 1922, the town bank failed in 1927, and by the 1930 census Devol had collapsed to just 328 people.

The Katy abandoned its tracks through Devol in 1972, and by the 1980s the town's only remaining business was a tack shop specializing in racehorse saddles.

The 2020 census counted only 93 residents in Devol, down from 151 in 2010 — a drop of about 38 percent — making it one of the smallest incorporated towns in Oklahoma.

At the 2000 census Devol's 150 residents lived in 62 households on the town's half square mile, and the area around town remains farm and ranch country tied to the Red River valley.

Today the only business in Devol proper is an agricultural chemical company employing two people, a far cry from the refinery town of 1920.