Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Freedom, OK

Freedom is a small city in Woods County, about twenty-five miles west of Alva, the county seat, on the banks of the Cimarron River, and its nickname is "Queen City of the Cimarron."

Freedom is known as the smallest certified city — as opposed to a town — in the state of Oklahoma.

Settlement around Freedom followed the Cherokee Strip Land Run of 1893; the community was granted a post office in 1901 with Adlah Annis as first postmaster, and its name was chosen by the postal service.

Freedom did not officially incorporate until 1925, when it had a population of 251.

The Battle of Turkey Springs, fought about ten miles northeast of present-day Freedom on September 13-14, 1878, was the last known encounter between the United States Cavalry and American Indians in Oklahoma.

The Buffalo and Northwestern Railroad reached the Freedom area in 1919-20, helping the young town grow.

Freedom hosts the annual Freedom Open Rodeo and Old Cowhand Reunion, founded in 1938 and billed as the "Biggest Open Rodeo in The West"; each August the event swells the town's population to more than 5,000 people.

Alabaster Caverns State Park, six miles south of Freedom, contains one of the world's largest gypsum caves open to the public — a main cavern about three-fourths of a mile long — and the state bought the land in 1953 and made it a state park in 1956; the caverns shelter five species of bats, at times numbering up to ten thousand.

Cargill Salt operates a solar salt processing plant about eight miles west of Freedom; salt production there began with Ezra Blackmon's company in 1935, and Cargill bought the plant in 1982.

Freedom State Bank, founded by David H. Powers in 1919 and a fixture of the town for nearly a century, was closed by the FDIC in June 2014 and reopened as a branch of Alva State Bank & Trust.