Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Vernon, OK

Vernon is a small unincorporated community in southwestern McIntosh County, about ten miles southeast of Dustin, in what was the Creek Nation.

Vernon was established in 1911 on the Tankard Ranch, with Thomas Haynes securing much of the land for the townsite and helping to organize the community.

Vernon is one of Oklahoma's historic All-Black towns — one of only thirteen still existing of the more than fifty founded in the state — and it was named for Bishop W. T. Vernon of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The town received its postal designation in 1912, with Ella Woods as the first postmaster, and Louise Wesley established Vernon's first school and church.

In 1917 the community built the New Hope Baptist Church, and Vernon became one of the first communities in Oklahoma to receive help from the Julius Rosenwald Fund to build a public school.

Two Vernon landmarks preserve that heritage: the rock-front Vernon Post Office building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and the Rock Hill School is recorded in the Oklahoma Landmarks Inventory as a resource of African American history.

Local businessman S. B. Dozier built a sawmill, a steam-powered cotton gin and a grist mill in Vernon, along with a two-story native-stone general merchandise store completed in 1915 — still the only two-story building ever built in the town.

According to the town's own historical record, Vernon was once one of the largest of Oklahoma's Black towns, with more than 2,500 residents at its peak in the mid-1920s, before the Great Depression and the post-World War II exodus to cities drained its population.

Vernon's post office closed in 1993 and its mail was consolidated with nearby Hanna, and because Vernon is unincorporated, no official census population is published for the community.