Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Ryan Historic District Ryan, OK

Ryan is a town in southwestern Jefferson County, Oklahoma, located just two miles north of the Red River and the Texas state line, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 81 and State Highway 32, eleven miles south of Waurika.

The town was named in honor of rancher Stephen W. Ryan, an Arkansas native who settled near present-day Ryan in 1875 and, through his marriage to a Chickasaw woman, acquired vast acreage in what was then Pickens County of the Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory.

Stephen Ryan's home, built around 1877, was the community's first residence, and a post office had been established in the locality in June 1890.

When the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway constructed a station on Ryan's land in 1892, Stephen Ryan platted the site for the town that now bears his name.

Fire nearly destroyed Ryan in December 1895, but the residents rebuilt the town.

By 1908 Ryan had thirty businesses, including two banks, a hotel, a cotton gin, two lumberyards, a flour mill, and a cottonseed oil mill.

Ryan was named the seat of Jefferson County by delegates to the 1906 Constitutional Convention, but it lost that title in February 1912 when county voters chose Waurika as the county seat.

Ryan developed as an agricultural and ranching community, and its population peaked at 1,379 in 1920.

Ryan is known as the birthplace of martial artist and actor Chuck Norris.

The population of Ryan was 667 at the 2020 census, down from 816 in 2010.