Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Norge, OK

Norge is a small town in western Grady County, Oklahoma, on State Highway 92 about four to seven miles southwest of Chickasha, the county seat.

The town's name is the Norwegian word for Norway, chosen to honor the large group of Norwegian immigrant farmers who settled the community.

Norge was settled about 1907 as Norden, on the old Allie townsite along the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway; the Norden post office opened January 27, 1908, and was renamed Norge on March 21, 1908.

President Theodore Roosevelt personally commissioned Norwegian immigrant Anfin Ersland, a Civil War veteran, as Norge's first postmaster, and the settlers had traveled from Iowa in two railroad passenger cars in 1907 in search of their own land, later joined by Norwegian families from Illinois.

Early Norge was a complete farm town with a railroad depot, a Western Union office, two grain elevators, two cotton gins, a lumberyard, two service stations, a blacksmith shop, two churches and a grade school.

The community counted about 60 people in 1918 and 300 by 1930, but the Norge post office closed in 1954 and the town did not incorporate until 1971.

The 2020 census counted 129 residents in Norge, down from 145 in 2010, living in 52 households in a town of only about 0.3 square miles, with a median age of 54.6 years.

Every Norge resident counted in 2020 lived in a rural area, and the town's economy at the start of the twenty-first century rested mainly on oil and natural gas production.

A rural water system turned Norge into a residential spot for families southwest of Chickasha, including many descendants of the town's founding Norwegian settlers.