Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Wright City, OK

Wright City is a town in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, standing on State Highway 98 less than two miles north of the Little River.

Wright City was founded around 1909 as a company town, built by the Choctaw Lumber Company, a subsidiary of the Dierks Lumber and Coal Company, to run a major processing plant using timber from the region's virgin forests.

At its founding, the community stood in Towson County, part of the Apukshunnubbee District of the Choctaw Nation.

The town was first called Bismark: a post office charter was issued under that name on March 24, 1910, chosen by the Dierks brothers after a Nebraska town where they had run a lumber outlet.

During World War I the German-sounding name was dropped in favor of Wright, and on May 18, 1920, the town became Wright City, honoring William Wiley Wright, McCurtain County's first war casualty.

As a classic company town, Wright City had a sawmill, planer, railroad shops, a bank, a hotel, a motion picture theater, an ice factory, and a high school whose teams were known as the LumberJax.

The lumber company divested its houses and other non-mill property in 1965, and Wright City incorporated as an independent town in 1966.

Weyerhaeuser bought the Wright City production complex in 1969 and kept it as the town's economic engine until the mill closed permanently in March 2009, a shutdown that affected 165 employees.

Wright City's population peaked at 1,168 in 1980; by the 2020 census it had fallen to 616 residents living in 250 households.

At the 2020 census, 41.1 percent of Wright City residents were Native American, the largest single group in town.