Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Gate Historic District Gate, OK

Gate is a town in Beaver County in the Oklahoma Panhandle, on U.S. Highway 64 about three miles west of the Harper County line.

Gate was platted in 1883 as Gate City and established as a post office in 1886; the name was shortened to Gate in 1894 and came from the town's role as the 'gateway' to a large ranching area.

Gate stood in the lawless strip called No Man's Land until the Organic Act of 1890 made it part of Oklahoma Territory.

In its No Man's Land days, Gate and nearby Neutral City were notorious outlaw haunts, and a low-hanging branch of a tree between them, remembered as the Hangman's Tree, was used by vigilance committees.

By 1910 Gate was a busy frontier town with two livery stables, a hotel, a bank, a doctor's office, a funeral home, a U.S. Land office and many other businesses.

When the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway built its tracks about a mile west of Gate in 1912, residents platted a new townsite and physically moved their buildings to the railroad, where Gate stands today.

Gate's population stood at 774 in 1907 and peaked at 958 in 1910, then fell to 309 by 1920 after the move and changing times.

The Gate Museum, established in 1975, preserves the community's pioneer history, and the old Gate School was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

Gate has dwindled to just 60 residents in the 2020 census, down from 93 in 2010, spread across about 0.2 square miles.

Students from Gate attend Laverne Public Schools in neighboring Harper County.