Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Phillips Phillips, OK

Phillips is a town in Coal County, Oklahoma, on U.S. Highway 75, about three miles south of Coalgate, the county seat.

Phillips began as a coal mining camp on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway (the Katy), situated between Coalgate and Lehigh.

Phillips was named for Henry L. Phillips, who owned a store in the camp and operated a coal mine.

A post office was established at Phillips, Indian Territory, on April 2, 1892; at the time of its founding, Phillips was located in Atoka County, part of the Pushmataha District of the Choctaw Nation.

By 1918 Phillips had an MK&T station, several cafés, an ice plant, a Methodist church, and electricity supplied by the Public Service Company of Oklahoma, with an estimated population of 650.

Phillips' population peaked at 972 in the 1920 census, when the deep coal mines were still working.

When the deep coal mines closed in 1921, Phillips collapsed economically, and its population fell from 972 in 1920 to just 176 by 1930.

Phillips' post office closed on April 2, 1927 — exactly 35 years to the day after it had opened — and the town's school was annexed to Coalgate in 1956.

As of the 2020 census, Phillips had a population of 122 people, with a median age of 40.0 years, spread over about 0.5 square miles.