A brief history of Oklahoma counties

Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907.

The U.S. state of Oklahoma is divided into 77 counties. Logan, Cleveland, Oklahoma, Canadian, Kingfisher, Payne, and Beaver counties were the first counties created on May 2, 1890, and the last county to be formed was Cotton County on August 27, 1912.

Today’s Oklahoma counties did not always exist in the present form. They went through many different changes in the space of a few short years, evolving through a complex transition from tribal sovereign lands of the Indian Territory and the federally administered Unassigned Lands into the organized Oklahoma Territory before unification at statehood.

On May 2, 1890, the western half of the region became part of the newly organized Oklahoma Territory under the Oklahoma Organic Act; the territory was established alongside the remaining eastern tribal jurisdictions.

The first territorial government was organized in 1890 from the Unassigned Lands and the Public Land Strip (the panhandle). The original territorial boundaries expanded over the next decade as subsequent Native American reservations were systematically opened to white settlement through a series of land runs.

There were originally 7 Oklahoma counties when it was first organized as the Oklahoma Territory, they were initially designated numerically as the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh counties.

The State of Oklahoma entered the union as the 46th state on November 16, 1907.

Former counties and history

  • Day County: Created on April 19, 1892, following the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation lands to settlement. It was named for Grand Army of the Republic official Charles M. Day. Following statehood unification in 1907, delegates at the Constitutional Convention dissolved the sparsely populated county entirely, partitioning its land between the newly established Ellis and Roger Mills counties.
  • Swanson County: Created on August 13, 1910, by gubernatorial proclamation out of parts of Comanche and Kiowa counties. It was named for Claude A. Swanson, the prominent U.S. Senator and Secretary of the Navy. Following rapid political disputes, the county seat town of Snyder faced immediate litigation from parent counties, leading the Oklahoma Supreme Court to declare the county’s formation illegal and officially dissolve it on June 27, 1911.
  • Beaver County (Old): Created on May 2, 1890, by the Organic Act to encompass the entirety of the formerly unorganized Oklahoma Panhandle (known as No Man’s Land). It was named after the Beaver River. Upon Oklahoma statehood on November 16, 1907, the massive original county was completely dismantled and split into three distinct modern counties: Cimarron, Texas, and a vastly reduced modern Beaver County.
  • Numerical Counties (First through Seventh): Formed on May 2, 1890, as the foundational local jurisdictions of the Oklahoma Territory. Lacking localized names, they were legally designated by numbers. By a vote of the territorial citizens in 1890, the jurisdictions were permanently renamed, transforming County One into Logan, County Two into Oklahoma, County Three into Cleveland, County Four into Canadian, County Five into Kingfisher, County Six into Payne, and County Seventh into Beaver.