Biohazard Cleanup Near West Slick Slick, OK

Slick is an incorporated town in eastern Creek County, Oklahoma, situated ten miles southeast of Bristow on State Highway 16.

Slick began as an oil-boom town in March 1920, after oil tycoon Thomas B. Slick — known as the 'King of the Wildcatters' — drilled a discovery well in the area, and the town was named for him.

The Oklahoma-Southwestern Railway was completed into Slick the same year, 1920, and was extended south to Nuyaka in 1921, making the town a distribution and shipping point for the surrounding oil field.

By 1922 the town's population was estimated at between 2,500 and 3,500 people, drawn by the rush of oil-field workers.

The Slick Townsite Company, with Thomas B. Slick as president, arranged gas service for homes and businesses and planned bungalow-style houses for the flood of oil workers, while local farmers were served by a gristmill and a cotton gin.

By 1923 Slick's African American residents had their own separate school, a Baptist church, and a hotel.

Oil production began declining in late 1923, the railroad was abandoned by 1930, and when Slick appeared in the federal census for the first time in 1930 it counted only 422 people.

Slick's population was 151 at the 2020 census — the same figure as in 1950 and 1960 — with a median age of 48.5 years.

Today all of Slick's employed residents commute to work in larger communities such as Bristow, Sapulpa, and Tulsa.