Wakita is a town in Grant County, Oklahoma, United States, approximately south of the Kansas border. Wakita was founded on September 16, 1893. Its population was 311 at the 2020 census.

History

Before the town's founding in 1893, there was a dispute over the right to name it. The town's postmaster and the owner of the first general store believed it should be named Whiteville. Local Deputy U.S. Marshall Herbert John Green motioned for the town be named after a Cherokee chief of local significance named Wakita (pronounced Wok-ih-taw). claimed it was probably a Greek word meaning "to cry" or "to lament". At statehood in 1907, Wakita had 388 residents; by 1910, it had grown to 405.

Geography

Wakita is northwest of Medford, the county seat, on State Highway 11A.

According to the United States Census Bureau, it has a total area of , all land.

Demographics

2020 census

As of the 2020 census, Wakita had a population of 311. The median age was 46.1 years. 19.6% of residents were under the age of 18 and 27.7% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 78.7 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 77.3 males age 18 and over.

There were 132 households in Wakita, of which 31.1% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 34.8% were married-couple households, 22.7% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 31.8% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 42.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 23.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

! Race !! Number !! Percent

|-

| White || 278 || 89.4%

|-

| Black or African American || 4 || 1.3%

|-

| American Indian and Alaska Native || 9 || 2.9%

|-

| Asian || 0 || 0.0%

|-

| Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander || 2 || 0.6%

|-

| Some other race || 1 || 0.3%

|-

| Two or more races || 17 || 5.5%

|-

| Hispanic or Latino (of any race) || 10 || 3.2%

|}

2010 census

As of the census

Students in Wakita went to school at Wakita Public School K-12 through the 2010–2011 school year, after which the school closed due to low enrollment (30 students) and lack of necessary funding. Wakita Schools merged with Medford Public Schools, although many Wakita students also attend Pond Creek-Hunter High School.<!--Please cite a newspaper source saying that many do so!-->

Notable people

  • Virgil A. Richard, retired brigadier general in the United States Army and gay rights activist
  • Cindy Ross, first female president of Cameron University

Wakita was the setting of a 1984 television commercial about DuPont's subsidiary Conoco using seismograph technology to search for oil. It was aired during the 1984 World Series. The voice over starts with, "Nothing much changes in Wakita, Oklahoma."

Wakita was featured in the 1996 blockbuster film Twister starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in which Wakita was destroyed by an F4 tornado that was part of a storm system later spawning an F5 tornado. False fronts were built onto the existing store fronts for some shots and then were removed and replaced with rubble in the streets after the tornadic storm hit and the rest of the building was removed using CGI. Some original buildings were demolished and never replaced, with some of the bricks from the demolished buildings used to construct Twister Park. The Twister Museum, dedicated to movie memorabilia from Twister, opened a few months before the movie was released and remains a town attraction.

In 2021, Jane Remover released her debut album "Frailty", which features a Google Street View screenshot of a house in Wakita as the cover.

There's also yearly events in Wakita featuring tornado interceptors such as the SRV Dominator and the Tornado Intercept Vehicle, along with many storm chasers and their chasing vehicles.

References

  • Wakita Twister Museum [https://www.twistermuseumstore.com/]