Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Goltry, OK

Goltry is a small town in far southeastern Alfalfa County in northwestern Oklahoma, lying along State Highway 45 about twenty miles southeast of Cherokee, the county seat.

Goltry's area was part of the Cherokee Outlet and was opened to non-Indian settlement in September 1893, though the town itself only appeared a decade later with the railroad.

Goltry owes its existence to the Arkansas Valley and Western Railway, later part of the Frisco system, which built a line across the area in 1904.

Goltry was surveyed and platted on 240 acres in 1904 by a townsite company headed by John Linden, and it was named for Enid resident Charles Goltry, who owned the land and whose milling company built a grain elevator there.

Goltry's first postmaster, James Hagemeier, was appointed in January 1904, and 183 people lived in the new town by statehood in 1907.

Goltry was settled heavily by Germans from Russia, along with settlers from Bohemia and Switzerland, and as late as 2000 one-third of its residents claimed German ancestry; its Pleasant View Mennonite church was organized in 1905.

Goltry's population peaked at 346 in 1930, and the town counted 251 residents at the 2020 census, down from 249 in 2010 after decades of hovering between two and three hundred people.

Goltry's Farmers' Exchange Elevator is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Goltry is the birthplace of Wally Parks (1913-2007), the founder of the National Hot Rod Association.

Goltry shares the Timberlake school district with the nearby town of Helena, and the town reincorporated in December 1974 after its original incorporation had lapsed.