Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Spavinaw, OK

Spavinaw is a town in northeastern Mayes County, Oklahoma, best known as the birthplace of baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle, who was born there in 1931.

Spavinaw takes its name from Spavinaw Creek, a name French traders and explorers gave the stream in the 18th century; historian Muriel Wright traced it to French words describing the wine-colored young growth of the local oak trees.

The first recorded settler at Spavinaw was Lewis Rogers, son of Captain John Rogers, who set up a mill, a distillery and a salt works on the creek in 1829.

Spavinaw's first post office opened on May 9, 1878, under the name Lynch's Prairie, and the community became Spavinaw in March 1879 after the Lynch family mills there.

In the 1920s the city of Tulsa dammed Spavinaw Creek to create Lake Spavinaw as its water supply — completed in 1924 at a cost of $7.5 million, it was the first man-made lake in northeastern Oklahoma — and the old townsite of Spavinaw Mills went under the water.

Displaced residents moved a short distance and refounded the town on its present site, and Spavinaw was incorporated on March 17, 1930.

During the lake-building era Spavinaw was notorious as a wild town with wide-open saloons and staged boat races and water shows on the new lake.

Lake Spavinaw, whose dam stands directly east of the town limits, remains the principal source of water for the city of Tulsa, some 50 miles away.

Spavinaw State Park, just south of town on State Highway 20, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and offers about 35 park acres, 86 campsites and a swimming beach on the lake.

Spavinaw's population peaked at 623 in 1980, and the 2020 census counted 350 people living in 159 households.