Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Fargo, OK

Fargo is a town in northeastern Ellis County, Oklahoma, on State Highway 15, about thirteen miles southwest of Woodward — not to be confused with Fargo, North Dakota.

The Southern Kansas Railway built tracks through the area in 1887, and the land was opened to settlement by the Cherokee Outlet land run of 1893, when David C. Ooley filed a claim near Boggy Creek and opened a general store.

Fargo went through three postal names in little over a decade: Whitehead from October 1893, Oleta from August 1901, and Fargo from February 1905, for reasons the historical record does not explain.

When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, Fargo was incorporated from Oleta Township with a population of 436, even though Ellis County itself was only created at statehood from part of Woodward County.

A 1909 fire destroyed all of the buildings on the east side of Fargo's Main Street, yet the town still supported three churches, a public school, the Fargo Journal newspaper, and a telephone connection by that year.

By the 1940s and 1950s Fargo had two grocery stores, two implement dealers, two farmers' cooperatives with grain elevators, and several service stations; its Stock Exchange Bank building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Fargo, like many towns in the region, never fully recovered from the Dust Bowl years, and its population has hovered around three hundred for decades — 312 residents in the 2020 census, down from 364 in 2010.