Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in IXL, OK

IXL is a historic all-Black freedmen's town in Okfuskee County, located on Oklahoma State Highway 48 about 9 miles northwest of Okemah, the county seat, with Okemah Lake to its east.

African American farm families were settled on Muscogee (Creek) land allotments around IXL as early as 1900, but the community was not formally incorporated as a town until October 24, 2001.

The origin of IXL's unusual name is disputed: one explanation says the letters stand for 'Indian Exchange Land,' a reference to the town being on Mvskoke land, while another says they were taken from the first initials of three men.

When residents incorporated in 2001, they took in a four-square-mile area and set up a town government with a mayor and a council.

IXL's population was 59 at the 2020 census, up from 51 in 2010, and its median age in 2020 was 47.5 years.

Spread across roughly four square miles, IXL had a population density of only about 13 people per square mile at the 2010 census.

Education has been central to IXL since its early years: a grant from the Julius Rosenwald Fund provided $1,100 to build the IXL District School 12 building, which served first through eighth grades.

The old schoolhouse was razed to make way for a new Community Building erected around 2012 at the town's center, the intersection of State Highway 48 and County Road East-West 1030.

IXL residents created their own fire department and built a three-bay fire station, an unusual level of civic infrastructure for a town of fewer than 60 people.

IXL Cemetery, in neighboring Paden Township, records early-twentieth-century burials of African American residents whose descendants still live in the area.