24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Wilburton, OK

Wilburton is the county seat of Latimer County in southeastern Oklahoma, set in the Sans Bois Mountains at the junction of U.S. Highway 270 and State Highway 2.

The community grew up around Riddle's Station, a Butterfield Overland Mail stage stop built in 1858 on the route from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Fort Worth, Texas.

The Wilburton townsite was platted in 1890, and the town's name is most often credited to Will Burton, a contractor and surveyor who helped build the Choctaw Coal and Railway line — though another account credits Lehigh Valley Railroad president Elisha Wilbur.

A post office was established at Wilburton, Indian Territory, in 1891, when the community lay in Sans Bois County of the Choctaw Nation.

Coal mining became Wilburton's dominant industry in the 1890s and early 1900s, and in 1906 Latimer County produced 442,000 tons of coal, more than any other county in Oklahoma's coal belt.

Mining around Wilburton was deadly work: 133 miners died in local mining accidents between 1905 and 1930, including 91 killed in a single mine explosion.

Wilburton incorporated as a city on April 10, 1910.

In 1909 the state established the Oklahoma School of Mines and Metallurgy in Wilburton to train miners; the school is now Eastern Oklahoma State College.

In 1931 Wilburton was nicknamed the "Little Capital of Oklahoma" because the state Supreme Court's chief justice, the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, and an Industrial Commission member all hailed from the town.

Robbers Cave State Park, about five miles north of Wilburton, was one of Oklahoma's original seven state parks, established in 1935 with Civilian Conservation Corps construction.