24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Texola, OK

Texola is a town in western Beckham County, about one mile east of the Texas state line and twenty-one miles southwest of Sayre, the county seat — it is the first or last town in Oklahoma on the old Route 66 corridor, depending on your direction.

Before settling on Texola, the townsite was called first Texoma and then Texokla, all three names referring to its spot beside the Texas-Oklahoma line.

Because Texola sits near the 100th meridian, the state boundary was surveyed eight different times, which meant some early residents lived in both Texas and Oklahoma without ever moving.

Texola's post office was established on December 12, 1901, with Reuben H. Grimes as the first postmaster, when the site was still part of northern Greer County; it became part of newly formed Beckham County at statehood in 1907.

The Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad arrived in 1902, and Texola grew into a cotton town with cotton gins, a gristmill, general stores, and a weekly newspaper, the Texola Herald, published from 1902 until about 1921.

A small Territorial Jail was built in Texola in 1910, the same year the census recorded 361 residents.

Texola's population peaked at 581 in the 1930 census, boosted by U.S. Route 66, which ran through town as 5th Street until Interstate 40 was completed to the north in 1975; today the town is reached from I-40 Exit 1.

Texola's Magnolia Service Station, built in 1930 by the Magnolia Petroleum Company on Route 66, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

The 2020 census counted 43 residents in Texola, an increase from 36 in 2010 — a rare population gain for a town that had declined for ninety years.