Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Tamaha, OK

Tamaha is a small town in northeastern Haskell County, Oklahoma, sitting on the banks of the Arkansas River at Kerr Lake (the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir), about 13 miles north-northeast of Stigler, the county seat.

The town's name is a Choctaw word meaning simply "town," and the Oklahoma Historical Society calls Tamaha perhaps the most historic settlement in Haskell County.

Tamaha began as a riverboat landing in the early 1830s, when Choctaw families began arriving there after removal, and the settlement was first known as Pleasant Bluff, after a nearby creek.

During the Civil War the Union supply steamer J. R. Williams was captured and grounded near Tamaha while running between Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Fort Gibson, and its rusted skeleton long remained at the site.

Tamaha took its present name in 1884, when a post office was established there; the post office stayed open until 1954.

River traffic built the town up to 237 people in 1900 and a peak of 501 in 1920, but steamboat traffic ended in 1912 and devastating fires in 1919 and again in September 1930 destroyed virtually every business in town.

The town's population fell to 202 in 1930 and hit a low of 80 in 1960, and the 2020 census counted just 151 residents, down from 176 in 2010.

Back in 2000, Tamaha's 198 residents lived in only 73 households spread across the town's roughly 6.4 square miles of riverfront land.

The Tamaha Jail and Ferry Landing, the town's last physical link to its steamboat era, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and today Tamaha survives mainly as a quiet vacation community on Kerr Lake.